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Fostering Cross-cultural Understanding in Research Training

“The metrics for measuring innovation are quite exclusive, it is not inclusive. It is racialized for the most part and therefore it does not really capture the stuff that goes on in marginal spaces.”

Chidi Oguamanam, Full Professor, Common Law Section, Faculty of Law 

The Open African Innovation Research Partnership (Open AIR) has transformed our understanding of Africa’s role in the global knowledge economy, promoting inclusion through African technology hubs, empowering women, youth and members of marginalized communities to drive inclusive innovation in Africa, and building understanding and respect for Indigenous data sovereignty and knowledge governance systems. Founded in 2006, the partnership is led by Professor Jeremy de Beer and Professor Chidi Oguamanam, who bring an unwavering commitment to creating a world where the benefits of knowledge and innovation are distributed more equitably and inclusively.

This video features a roundtable discussion from the second day of the 4th Autumn School on the Methodology of Research in Law, in which Professors de Beer and Oguamanam are joined by Open AIR’s Regional Manager and Research Associate, Victoria Schorr, to discuss how the partnership approaches research training in its efforts to decolonize how we see innovation. Open AIR boasts a substantial training and mentorship program through which scholars from Africa and Canada collaborate on Open AIR projects, author and co-author publications in both English and French, and are supported in convening their own events. The panelists discuss their distinctive approach of mutual respect and reciprocity, which is elaborated upon by an impromptu contribution from Esther Ekong, a current PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, and the lead of Open AIR’s New and Emerging Researchers Group, a self-governing but closely-guided community of emerging scholars.

The panelists explain the nuances of navigating the cross-cultural nature of the partnership, emphasizing its commitment to bridging across global divides to learn from Africa rather than teach to Africa. This commitment to reciprocal collaboration is allowing Open AIR to create new models to better measure and value diverse modes of innovation.

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Presenters
Jeremy de Beer, Chidi Oguamanam & Victoria Schorr

Jeremy de Beer  

Full Professor and Director of Open AIR, Common Law Section, Faculty of Law 

Jeremy de Beer is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, where he creates and shapes ideas—about technology innovation, intellectual property, and global trade and development. He is also a Faculty Member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cape Town’s IP Unit.

His current work helps solve practical challenges related to innovation in the digital economy, life science industries, and clean technology sector. Innovation and Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics in Africa is the most recent of several books in these areas. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he has also published more than 65 peer-reviewed chapters and articles across the disciplines of law, business, political science, and public policy. A passionate and experienced speaker, he has delivered nearly 200 invited lectures and presentations in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

As a director of several large-scale research projects and partnerships, he is currently investigating the role of intellectual property for open innovation. He is a co-founder and director of Open AIR, the Open African Innovation Research network, which connects dozens of multi-disciplinary researchers across African countries, Canada and elsewhere to scale up innovation by easing tensions between intellectual property and access to knowledge.

Chidi Oguamanam  

Full Professor, Common Law Section, Faculty of Law 

Dr. Oguamanam is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and an affiliate of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He began his academic career as a fellow of Canada Institutes of Health Research Program in Health Law and Ethics of Health Research at Dalhousie University in 2003.

   

Dr. Oguamanam has diverse interdisciplinary research interests in the areas of global knowledge governance in general, especially as manifested in the dynamics of intellectual property and technology law with emphasis on biodiversity, biotechnology, including agricultural biotechnology. He identifies the policy and practical contexts for the exploration of the intersections of knowledge systems, particularly western science and the traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities within the broader development discourse and paradigm.  He is interested in the global institutional and regime dynamics for negotiating access and distributional challenges in regards to the optimization of benefits of innovation by stakeholders.  

He is the author of:  International Law and Indigenous Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Plant Biodiversity, and Traditional Medicine (2006) and Intellectual Property in Global Governance: A Development Question (2011).   

Victoria Schorr  

Regional Manager and Research Associate, Open AIR, uOttawa 

Victoria Schorr is the Regional Manager and a Research Associate at OpenAIR, a unique collaborative network of researchers spread across 15 African countries and Canada. Co-lead by Jeremy de Beer and Chidi Oguamanam, the Canadian hub is hosted at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society.

Victoria Schorr is a sub-Saharan Africa specialist with nearly 15 years of experience analyzing African politics, economics, trade, and business. She holds an MSc in African Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a BA in African Studies from McGill University. Her areas of specialization include African political economy, African business and the private sector, international business and investment, international relations, behavioral economics, and development.

Prior to joining Open AIR in July 2015, Victoria Schorr worked with organizations ranging from grassroots NGOs to the UN, as well as with several Government of Canada departments including Global Affairs Canada. She has several publications, both academic and non-academic, and has presented on African issues at several conferences and events. Schorr was also a Board Member of the Canadian International Council’s Africa Study Group for more than five years and is a Board Member of the Ottawa branch of the McGill Alumni Association.

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