ESKE PROJECT

Student Knowledge Exchange

Mandekh Hussein serves as a co-investigator in the ESKE project. She is driven by initiatives grounded in collaboration, sustainability, and ownership and prioritises efforts centred on equipping individuals and communities with the resources, skills and opportunities to actualize their vision, find new opportunities and widen their horizons. Currently, she is a Lecturer and Programme Director for the BASc Global Challenges degree at Brunel University – focused on curating skills to deliver sound, sustainable and positively impactful transformation. She is also Strategic Consultant, focused on addressing health inequities through critical co-production and is an Education Consultant, working on the nexus between community transformation and EduTech in Africa.

This project for her is important, as it challenges monocultures of knowledge and contributes to the creation of a pluriverse of knowledge systems where different ways of knowing, living, and being can co-exist, regardless of borders.

About Us

ESKE aims to develop and disseminate an adaptable and effective knowledge exchange model of practice that takes full advantage of digital platforms to enable engagement with students and staff in partner universities and in local community settings. This is done as a mechanism to develop transformative building blocks for cooperative learning and knowledge exchanges. Activities taking place in-country provide the opportunity to learn from communities, gain an appreciation of indigenous knowledge and insights into the challenges of particular settings, engage in mutually enriching discussions allowing cultural, knowledge and skill sharing across students and local communities promoting collaborative thinking to address agreed issues.

The project’s knowledge exchange (KE) model is designed to support students from all backgrounds to reach their individual and collective potential especially with respect to sustainable development. KE activities that involve such a collaborative learning methodology will help to increase self-efficacy, cultural intelligence, leadership and professional skills as well as benefit students’ academic achievements. These ‘softer’ skillsets are key challenges – the ‘missing middle’ in ESKE’s theory of change, that often restrict individual students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, from excelling during and following higher education. The opportunity to engage with students from Copperbelt University and the University of Zambia is a critical component of ESKE providing the opportunity to examine social issues in both the UK and Zambia through ‘the gaze’ of a global south or north perspective, UK students will gain new insight into social institutions and structures.