One hundred and eighty-six ETU-SL staff members from six faculties took part in a two-day research capacity-building workshop on 4 and 5 April 2025. The university's published report records 22 women and 164 men among the participants, and identifies the Partnership for Resilience (PARES) Project as the partner.
The programme focused on the work that turns academic ideas into durable research practice: writing grant proposals, developing textbooks and publications, and supporting dissertation writing and supervision. Professor Susannah Mayhew, an adjunct professor at ETU-SL and the project's principal investigator, was among the facilitators, alongside academics from Makerere University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Njala University.
Sessions moved beyond presentations into questions of research design, policy, qualitative and quantitative methods, publishing choices and the practical demands of supervision. The report also notes discussions of peer review, funder expectations, ethics and the need to assess AI-generated material carefully rather than relying on it without validation.
For ETU-SL, the workshop was a staff-development exercise across teaching, research and community service. The university's report says participants were also directed to a later meeting for applicants pursuing MPhil and PhD study through the ETU-SL and Njala University memorandum of understanding.