UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG

Faculty of Humanities Research

Faculty of Humanities - Research Vision and Mission:

  • To produce research of the highest quality, ensuring that the Faculty retains and enhances its reputation as one of the leading centres for research and graduate studies in Africa
  • To encourage and enable all academic staff to be research active
  • To produce research of a pure or theoretical nature that contributes to the fundamental understanding of the disciplines in the humanities
  • To produce research of an applied nature that contributes to the solution to problems in the Southern African region particularly, and the continent more generally
  • To produce a culture of intellectual interest and engagement and a community of scholars dedicated to the development of knowledge and the rational appraisal of ideas, and ready to use their intellectual skills and expertise to engage in debate in the public domain
  • To help produce the next generation of researchers through the prioritising of graduate studies and through the commitment to developing research capacity amongst young or new members of staff and graduate students

Scholarships

Swiss Government scholarships for University Fine Arts and Music School for foreign students

Each country has its own application deadline. Usually it is around October or November. Please get in contact with the Swiss Diplomatic Representation in your home country in order to know their application deadline.

MESSAGE FROM PROFESSOR TAWANA KUPE, DEAN OF HUMANITIES

 

WISER and the School of Social Sciences announce the re-establishment of a Faculty-wide Interdisciplinary Seminar. The Wits Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities (WISH) will be hosted at WISER and held in the traditional late Monday afternoon time slot, from 15:00 to 16:30. The seminar will work in careful coordination with the existing disciplinary seminars, workshops and public talks that are currently being hosted in the Institute, the School and the wider Faculty.   

The Interdisciplinary Seminar is intended to provide a venue for the careful consideration of research problems that will help to map out existing and possible intellectual directions for Wits Social Science and Humanities researchers. It will work on the basis of discussion of pre-distributed papers that will be delivered and archived on the WISER website. Participants will be encouraged to attend only on the basis of having read the paper. The Seminar will be administered by WISER but it will be overseen and directed by an interdisciplinary committee. WISER and SOSS view the seminar as an opportunity for constructive cross-disciplinary investigation of research problems, and as a venue to foster and accelerate a closer, more critical and more productive, intellectual engagement between individual researchers, and disciplines. But we also view the seminar as a site to foster stronger linkages and engagements between South African and international scholarship and theory, and as a site to strengthen the voice of Wits-based scholars in this global conversation. We anticipate that the forum will provide local scholars with an opportunity for useful and intense criticism, without the destructive gladiatorial conflict that often characterises these events. 

To achieve these ends WISER and SOSS would like to encourage disciplines, centres, institutes and other schools from the Faculty to participate in the workings of the Seminar, and also to let us know about similar talks, seminars and workshops. WISER will build an online calendar of research events in the Faculty to supplement the use of email and physical notices, and to foster the coordination of these different forums. Individuals and disciplines that would like to receive notices about the seminar, or who might like to present work there, should send an email to Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za with the word WISH in the subject line. WISER will use these emails to build a single-purpose email notice list that distributes information about this seminar alone.

 


 

 

 

Policy and Procedures for Measurement of Research Output of Public Higher Education Institutions.

The Department of Higher Education and Training has asked for comment on a policy for measurement of research outputs.It is very important that our response is registered, despite the short time frame allowed. A careful response will give us the basis on which to engage the University Research Committee as well as the DHET.

If you would like to comment, please send your comments to anne.campbell@wits.ac.za before 19th Feb 2013.

Policy Document