Twinning Ph. D. Students From South and North: Towards Equity in Collaborative Research

Abstract

What works well in primary care education in your locality, region or country? • In this case, we focus on primary care research education. Twinning of individual Ph.D. students under strong institutional south–south or south–north partnerships may help build capacity for locally anchored primary care research potentially unaddressed by other projects and organisations, as well as enforce the quality of research and learning outcomes What challenges have you faced? • The high level of interdependency and sharing between the Ph.D. twins entails risks for project completion. Also, differences between the twins, their institutions and their country regulations pose challenges both for formal requirements and daily collaboration How have you addressed them? • Advocacy, timely planning, institutional commitment and information sharing at administrative levels help facilitate formal and informal institutional collaboration. Social investment, friendship, flexibility and alignment of expectations of the twins help streamline daily collaboration. Local employment of southern twin and inclusion of bilateral co-supervisors anchor the project locally What is the generalisable learning? • This pilot of matching and twinning Ph.D. students shows potential for equitable research capacity building in resource-constrained settings. It extends principles of collaborative learning to the doctoral level where the Ph.D. twins may compensate and challenge each other as well as share benefits and risks, successes and failures, joys and frustrations in their work, synergistically empowering one another as international collaborators, communicators and researchers