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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
The development of new postgraduate programmes
is nourished by research activity, which simultaneously
contributes substantially towards the augmentation and
support of research. A substantial grant from the AW
Mellon Foundation has enabled the faculty to mount a new
honours programme in Curatorship, driven by the Centre for
Curating the Archive and the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
The Department of Political Studies is contributing to UCT’s
new Graduate School for Development Policy and Practice
(both the MPhil and the Executive course programmes)
and other new postgraduate programmes on offer include
master’s degrees in Documentary Arts, in African Cinema,
and in Screenwriting, and a new Honours programme in
Romance Languages and Literature. The faculty committed
substantial resources during 2012 to renovating space
for postgraduate students, in order to promote a vibrant
postgraduate research culture on campus.
During 2012, we confirmed the appointment of Professor
Lungisile Ntsebeza as the AC Jordan Chair in African
Studies. The faculty also raised a substantial grant from the
AW Mellon Foundation to appoint two research chairs in
the Humanities, which will be filled in early 2013.
We are proud of colleagues and students who won prizes
in 2012. Professor Kelwyn Sole won the 2012 Thomas
Pringle Award for Poetry, awarded by the English Academy
of Southern Africa for the best poem,
Cape Town
(TM)
,
published in a South African journal in the last three
years. Professor Sole also launched a new 76-page book
of poetry,
Absent Tongues
. The 2012 UCT Creative Works
Award was won jointly by professor Gavin Younge and
professor Michael Godby.
A new research centre was launched at the end of 2012, the
Centre for African Language Diversity (linked to the African
Language Archive), under the leadership of Dr Matthias
Brenzinger. The centre has been set up to document
endangered languages, especially in Southern Africa,
and to become a node for scholarship and research in
African languages.
The large research clusters or ’hubs‘ in the faculty – the
Centre for Social Science Research (with its constituent
units, the Democracy in Africa Unit, the AIDS and Society
Research Unit, and the Sustainable Societies Research
Unit), the Institute for Humanities in Africa, and the Gordon
Institute for Performing and Creative Arts – as well as the
four DST/NRF SARChI Chairs, continue, in their different
ways, to promote scholarship through publications,
performances and exhibitions, postgraduate supervision,
and the organising of seminars and colloquia.
Departments and units within the faculty have been
greatly enriched by the contributions of a large number of
international visitors during 2012. These visitors contribute
to seminars and colloquia, participate in research
collaborations, and form networks with colleagues working
in the global north and south.
The faculty continues to benefit handsomely from the
Emerging Researcher Programme, the Vice-Chancellor’s
Strategic Fund, and the University Research Committee block
grant and travel funding and we are grateful for the ongoing
support from UCT’s Office of Research and Innovation.
Departments
School of African and Gender
Studies, Anthropology and
Linguistics
School of Dance
Department of Drama
School of Education
Department of English
Language and Literature
Centre for Film and Media
Studies
Michaelis School of Fine Art
Department of Historical Studies
School of Languages
and Literatures
College of Music
Department of Philosophy
Department of Political Studies
Department of Psychology
Department of Religious Studies
Department of Social
Development
Department of Sociology
Affiliated Units
UCT Libraries, incorporating the
Library and Information Studies
Centre