Setting up a Master's programme in conference interpreting at the University of Nairobi: an interdisciplinary case study of a development project involving universities and international organisations

Abstract

In June 2010, the University of Nairobi launched its Master’s programme in Conference Interpreting in collaboration with the United Nations Office at Nairobi, the Directorate General for Interpretation of the European Commission, and the European Masters in Conference Interpreting Consortium, then coordinated by the Interpreting Department of the University of Geneva. This thesis is an interdisciplinary qualitative case study of this ‘Nairobi Project’. It aims to shed light on the challenges encountered by its stakeholders during the first two years of the Master’s programme, using a participant-observer paradigm. The Nairobi Project is not only an example of new approaches to interpreter training, but also a ‘development project’ in its most general sense, bringing together stakeholders from the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ with the aim of building capacity in a new discipline inside an African university. This thesis therefore relies on two main theoretical frameworks, the skill acquisition and expertise development approach to interpreter training and the projet comme arene framework for the analysis of development projects.