The Research Programme Concludes the First Part of Training Fourth Edition Researchers

Researchers benefiting from the fourth edition of the Research: to strengthen a culture of knowledge programme have concluded the first, one-month-long part of the academic training phase. The training was conducted in two phases: a week-long intensive training workshop in Lebanon, supervised by specialised researchers, which focused on developing scientific research skills; and three weeks of discussion between researchers and the scientific committee members in order to rebuild problems and premises of proposed research papers.

The workshop was held between November 5^th and November 10^th in Brummana, Lebanon. Nine out of 10 beneficiaries; living in Syria, Germany, Turkey, and Lebanon; attended the workshop, supervised by Hassan Abbas, Mariane Nujaim, and Marie Elias.

The training addressed three topics: a) the concepts and themes of culture and scientific research, b) the role of research and its relationship to other disciplines (politics, economics, and cultural production), and c) research techniques and methods.

The workshop focused on skills of phrasing and editing the content of research papers, both as a new component of the training programme and as a part of capacity building for researchers in the long term.

This year, the Guideline on Cultural Research Design, published by Ettijahat, was used as a reference for training. The Guideline contains methods to help researchers interested in exploring and identifying best-suited methods for each strain of topics. It also provides young researchers from different academic backgrounds with the necessary knowledge, skills, and mechanisms to conduct cultural research.

The training included multiple sessions that were designed to suit topics of the fourth edition, in addition to a lecture on arts and mechanisms of receiving by Marie Elias, PhD.

This year’s training programme also included a section dedicated to skills needed for the editing of scientific research and research papers. This was also supervised by Ettijahat, having gained expertise by running this programme for four years.

In December 2016, researchers will start working on their papers, set to be achieved by March 2017. During this time, the next training phase will be conducted, where researchers will work directly with supervisors specialised in papers’ respective topics.