1. Return flight
Return flight from home country to Secretariat office in Nairobi
Fellows will arrive in Nairobi in January, where they will be welcomed by the Secretariat team and settled into the place they will call home for the next four months. The fellows will participate in a one-week residential induction to the PAL Network, combined with a series of team-building activities to get to know each other, and the Secretariat team. Following shortly after the week-long induction, fellows will participate in a week-long workshop on citizen-led assessment data, facilitated through the Data and Design Working Group. The workshop will provide the opportunity for fellows to work through their proposed research studies and further develop their research questions and proposed methodologies.
The fellows will spend the next month further developing their research study and conducting preliminary analysis. Towards the end of February, the fellows will join the Research Working Group for a seminar on academic writing, with the opportunity to present their emerging analysis to the group for comments and feedback.
In March, the fellows will be joined in Nairobi by two post-doctoral researchers and one faculty staff member from the University of Cambridge’s REAL (Research for Equitable Access and Learning) Centre. The REAL centre will design a bespoke two-week program of targeted support tailored to the progress and individual research projects of the fellows. This support may include workshops, seminars, or 1-on-1 sessions, covering methods training, data analysis, data visualization, making presentations, or reading and commenting on drafts, as requested. In the final month of the fellowship program, fellows will develop a Working Paper, supported by their identified mentor(s) within the network. The post-doctoral researchers will also be on-hand remotely to read through final drafts of Working Papers to provide further comments and edits. Upon completion of their Working Paper in mid-May, fellows will return to their home institutions
Fellows are expected to work full-time on their research project and require sign-off from the director of their home institution to confirm they have been released from their current role for the duration of the fellowship program. During the four-month placement, fellows will be expected to participate as full-time members of the network Secretariat. Fellows will work alongside Secretariat staff within regular office hours and will participate in weekly team meetings and team-building activities. During the four-month program it is expected that the fellows’ time will be roughly structured as follows: