Professional Academic Development Over Here and Over There: Sociolinguistic Perspectives on North–South Collaboration and Joint PhD Research

This report develops interrelated perspectives on North–South collaboration, with a particular focus on joint PhD research. A specific – but perhaps atypical – case will be presented, in which the doctoral student is located and collects data in the Global North but is co-advised by supervisors from both Ghent University (Belgium) and the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) in the context of a strategic inter-institutional partnership between the two universities. The report details how the research project is inserted into interdependent trajectories and attends to crucial questions about academic cooperation in a transnational context across institutional, geographic and socio-cultural settings and with global academic aspirations. Is joint research only a matter of academic collaboration with relevant expertise? How does the project connect to pressing challenges of (sociolinguistic) knowledge production and – in this particular case – the theme of decolonisation?