Department for International and Comparative Education 1985-1995

Dr Anil Khamis : student 1992/3, lecturer 2002 – present

Anil talks about the links of the department with the Institute of Ismaili Studies and his continuing interest and work in the area of emergency education and also Muslim education:

"Upon completing my undergraduate studies in Toronto Canada where I had been resident for two decades (being originally a Ugandan exile of Idi Amin Dada), I was offered an Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) scholarship in the late 1980s and early 1990s to study in the UK. I obtained higher degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the Institute of Education or ULIE as it was then known. At the inauguration in the early 1970s, DICE first made a link with the IIS during the tenure of Peter Williams. Hugh Hawes and others were involved in assisting the IIS with its Teacher Education Curriculum. I continued my association with the IOE and went on to work in East Africa and South and Central Asia, frequently visiting the IOE, where I also ultimately obtained a PhD. I am presently a member of staff and Course Leader of the MA (EID). This then is a coming home of sorts for a Canadian national from Uganda!

Hugh Hawes and other DICE colleagues, including Kazim Bacchus, made further intellectual contributions to my work and to institutions with which I was fortunate to be associated. Particularly, I would like to mention The Aga Khan University’s (AKU) Institute for Educational Development; the first private internationally chartered university in Pakistan.  Kazim Bacchus served as foundational director from 1993 – 1999 and Hugh Hawes continues to this day to be actively engaged in innovations in health education.

I would like to commend EID (now LEID) and all it predecessors – as will be clear from the brief testimony above – for its vision and foresight, as well as its courage, to continue to explore educational boundaries that have spawned linkages and partnerships with institutions of learning and for its support for educational programmes and developing human resources all over the globe. Today, I am able to build on this breadth of vision to explore areas of interest that are significant in global terms and to which new thinking and resources need to be channelled. I am involved, for example, in developing Master’s level modules in Education in Muslim Societies and Emergency Education and continuing research in education and development with special reference to Muslim societies.  These areas are of increasing importance for us to understand and are ones in which contributions are required from institutions of higher learning, if we are to live in a world characterised by humanity and purposive development, rather than to live in blinkered and fragmented realities."

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