
Summer School 2023
One of the sets of activities of the SAF-ADAPT project is to develop and implement a joint summer school research skills programme to build the capacity of postgraduate and postdoctoral students to design and deliver research for impact, and facilitate the exchange of skills and experience between staff and students. This year the summer school was held in person at The Cape Milner in Cape Town.

The overarching purpose of the summer school programme is to support the quality, relevance and impact of research in complex topics relating to climate change in an African context. Recognizing the fast pace of change in the field and the varying strengths of disciplinary expertise amongst universities, supervisors were encouraged to attend and/or co-deliver on the summer school in order to promote an enabling environment for the ECRs to practice their new learning from the summer school once back home.
This year SAF-ADAPT was proud to welcome Prof Bruce Hewitson (University of Cape Town), who welcomed attendees and presented a plenary speak on Contesting (your) ethics in climate change contexts.

The summer school aspires to adopt an Afrocentric pedagogy which promotes transformative social learning that is inter-disciplinary and context-sensitive. The specific topics covered this year include:
- What skills do employers of climate change graduates want?
- Thinking about AI and work in climate change
- Strengthening your CV and career advise
- Opening communication beyond academic papers
- Visualising data
- Writing for The Conversation
- Overview of the writing process and structuring a thesis/chapter/abstract
A range of guest speakers helped encourage and engage attendees. Speakers included: Assoc. Prof Deshen Moodley, Jiska De Groot, Darlington Sibanda, Anna Taylor and Cherie Dirk, Sanjin Muftic, Shehnaaz Moosa, Michelle Shields, Tali Hoffman, Caroline Southey and Prof Brenda Cooper.

This year in particular students were encouraged to present their research as either 15 or 5 minute presentations, highlighting their methods and any results. The Summer School aimed to support the students ability to concisely present their research but also allowed feedback from other students and supervisors.

For more details on this years summer school as well as the resources shared please visit the dedicated website.