Presented at a workshop in Durban, South Africa on
May 30, 2015 by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard),
DrPH (Harvard)
1. Vision, mission, and objectives: What is the vision and
mission research? What is the mission of the research program in spear-heading
research in its priority areas of reform of thought, knowledge, and education?
Is it feasible that in the future most of our publications will be from our own
research? Can we meet the challenge of producing new knowledge instead of
recycling old knowledge?
2. Concept clarification: What do we mean by
reform of thought and reform of knowledge/epistemology? What other concepts in
thought and knowledge that need systematic definition? Do these theoretical
concepts have practical implications in society? How do we formulate the 4 components
of the thought theme (Qur’an, sunnat, Islamic heritage, and western heritage)
in terms of our research program? Is the knowledge/education theme covered
adequately by the concept of integration of knowledge (IOK)?
3. Research priorities in the thought theme: What are the
outstanding issues in our thought? What are our priority research areas and
questions in thought? How much has been written about them? What are the gaps
that need to be covered? Who and where are the researchers capable of covering
these gaps?
4. Research priorities in the
knowledge/epistemology theme: What is the order of priorities among academic
disciplines: social/human sciences, natural sciences, technology? What Islamic
sciences do we focus on? How do we integrate maqasid al shari’at and fiqh
in our research? Should our research in economic and political thought be
theoretical, practical or both?
5. Management of the research program: Should research be
managed centrally or should it decentralized? What are the comparative
advantages/disadvantages of centralization vs decentralization? What shall be
our policies in determining the amount of research funding and its duration
(short term, medium term, and long term)? How shall we formulate and advertise
requests for proposals (RFP)? What shall be our process and criteria for peer
review and approval of research proposals?
What shall be our processes for following up to ensure completion of
research projects on time while fulfilling our criteria of quality? What shall be our policy on publication and
dissemination of research? What shall be
our policies and processes for handling ethico-legal issues of research
contracts, copyright, authorship rights, and plagiarism?
