This section lists the courses for the Interdisciplinary PhD in Social Studies at MISR
(M Phil / PhD in Social Studies).
Understanding the World from the Vantage Point of Africa
MISR began its interdisciplinary MPhil/PhD program in January 2012. The 5-year program includes two years of intensive full-time coursework, during which students are required to take a set of core interdisciplinary courses, ranging from theory to history and historiography. Four broad thematic clusters define the program’s intellectual focus: Political Studies, Political Economy, Historical Studies, and Literary and Cultural Studies. Students specialize in one field but take classes across all four. This allows students to gain theoretical grounding while giving them a broad foundation in historically informed debates in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Curriculum
The curriculum of the MISR MPhil/PhD program seeks to ensure that each student’s course of study is driven forward by academic debates and not by orthodoxy or re-learning default assumptions. To accomplish this, the curriculum has a distinct feature: it combines an interdisciplinary focus with distinct disciplinary training in four different clusters:
- Political Economy;
- Political Studies;
- Historical Studies;
- Literary and Cultural Studies.
On the basis of interdisciplinarity, the MPhil/ Ph.D program has several dimensions.
- First, an interdisciplinary focus is cultivated through a set of core courses on social and political theory and historiography.
- Second, students are required to identify a primary cluster as their major field and a secondary cluster as their minor field, thereby ensuring they take courses from more than one disciplinary cluster.
- Third, each cluster includes a study of themes, such as gender, ethnicity, or the environment, that call for a cross- disciplinary focus.
Students are required to attend a Research Colloquium in the two first semesters of the third year of study, during which they present draft versions of their thematic and place- specific bibliographies. The entire academic faculty in the program participates in the Colloquium as discussants of students’ work. During the second semester of their third year, students write two bibliographical essays, one thematic and the other place-specific, in preparation for Comprehensive Examinations and development of a research proposal.
During that same year, third-year students teach two tutorials, one per semester, for Makerere University undergraduate classes in the social sciences. The students are awarded an MPhil Degree upon successful completion of Year 3. In addition, every student is required to demonstrate research competence in two languages other than English, the language of instruction. For students with mother tongue proficiency in a language other than English, this is effectively a single language requirement. Year 4 is devoted to field research and Year 5 to dissertation writing. Courses are taught by MISR faculty (Research Fellows), faculty from other Makerere University departments (Research Associates), and pre-eminent visiting scholars through MISR’S Global Scholars Program (Research Affiliates).
All MlSR-based faculty are required to divide their time equally between teaching and research, a course-load which translates into teaching two courses per year. Each course is organized as a seminar. Every seminar meets once a week, three hours at a time. The academic year calendar comprises two regular semesters per year, the first from early January to mid-April, and the second from mid-May to end-August. MISR provides full fellowships to all and funding for the MPhil/Ph.D program is essential.
While every student admitted into the program is on a full scholarship, successful completion of the MPhil and the writing of a successful research proposal in three years is a prerequisite for PhD funding for the remaining two years of doctoral studies. A student is awarded an MPhil degree upon successful completion of comprehensive examinations in their third year. The award of the PhD follows the successful completion of the PhD dissertation at the end of the fifth year of study.
Applications and Admissions
The MISR MPhil/PhD Scholarship follows a two- tier process of admission. The process begins with a public advert to which intending students respond by submitting their applications. The applications are reviewed and a longlist made. The longlisted candidates are invited for interviews from which a shortlist is finalized. The shortlisted candidates receive admission on scholarship.