Mellon Foundation seeks to support humanities and Social Sciences

The Andrew W Mellon Foundation team in a meeting with CHUSS management

Makerere University is hosting a team from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the New York comprising of the Vice President Mariet Westermann and the International Higher Education and Strategic Projects Director, Prof. Saleem Badat. The team is on a four-day fact-finding mission in Uganda aimed at informing the Foundation’s Board of Trustees’ decision-making on possible support to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Makerere University.  The team has today held several meeting with key officials in the University and the National Council for Higher Education to establish priority areas for funding, especially in research and graduate training. At the meetings with the Dean and Heads of Department in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training, the team emphasized the need for sustainability of the projects that will be funded in a bid to “redeem” the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Established in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies.  To this end, it supports exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.  The Foundation makes grants in five core program areas:  Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities; Arts; and Cultural Heritage; Diversity; Scholarly Communications; and International Higher Education and Strategic Projects.

In Africa, the Foundation has only been supporting seven Universities in South Africa for the last 29 years. Given the rate at which the continent is transforming, the Foundation viewed it necessary to expand their support to other leading universities in Africa to foster development. In East Africa, the Foundation plans to support Makerere University. 

Details of the meetings to be shared later.