UNDP lecture by Alcinda Honwana

UNDP lecture by Alcinda Honwana

On January 26, 2018 the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development (GTD) research programme hosted the 100th Kapuscinski Development Lecture. These lectures are given by leading scholars in the field of development and are co-funded by the UNDP and the European Commission and hosted by different universities in Europe each year. This year FASoS was selected amongst many competitors to host it and we invited Dr. Alcinda Honwana to speak on ‘Youth in Movement: Waithood, Migration and the Peripheries’. Aside from being extremely well attended, Dr. Honwana’s lecture and 2-day visit to FASoS gave us a perfect opportunity for enhancing teaching and research interlinkages and to come a step further in our aim to diversify our curriculum with the works of non-Western scholars. Dr. Honwana’s work is read in the Master Globalisation and Development and students had the opportunity to engage with Dr. Honwana about the concept of ‘waithood’ in young people’s lives. Honwana developed the concept by studying the precarity of young people’s lives in Africa. Our students asked her to reflect upon the concept as it relates more broadly to young people all around the world. Honwana’s work and lecture inspired two students of the 2017/18 co-hort to conduct their MA thesis on young refugees using waithood as their analytical lens. Dr. Honwana also gave a workshop for PhD students. Students were asked to reflect upon how the concept of waithood could inform their research on young people of migrant background living in Europe. Dr. Honwana reacted to their presentations and gave input for how they might approach their respective studies. Dr. Honwana’s work is influential in the field of youth studies and having a chance to interact with her was an excellent opportunity for MA and PhD students to engage more actively with her work. Her lecture can be viewed here