News for Witsies in the UK
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Join us for a Wits alumni reunion or catch up with Wits and fellow Witises online!
Wits alumni events in the UK
University of Edinburgh
Monday 15 October
17:30 – 19:00
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Adam Habib will speak about “#FeesMustFall & the Advancement of Social Justice”. There will be an opportunity to ask questions. This will be followed at 18:45 by a reception for Edinburgh colleagues and Wits alumni.
Venue: University of Edinburgh, Playfair Library Hall
Enquiries: Lynda Murray, Wits Representative UK, Lynda.Murray@wits.ac.za, UK mobile 07570930704.
South Africa House
Tuesday 16 October
18:30 – 20:00
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Adam Habib will speak to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the late Albertina Sisulu.
Venue: South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London
RSVP: Essential, to Ms Sinenhlanhla Sithole, SitholeS@dirco.gov.za
Bring photo ID and a copy of your invitation in order to be admitted
Chatham House
Wednesday 17 October
17:00-18:00
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Adam Habib will speak at Chatham House on “Higher Education in South Africa: Demands for Inclusion and the Challenges of Reform”.
Venue: Chatham House, 10 St James’s Square, St James’s, London SW1Y 4LE
More information / to register: https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/higher-education-south-africa-demands-inclusion-and-challenges-reform
London alumni reunion
Tuesday 23 October
18:00
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Adam Habib will host Wits alumni and share news about the University. Wine and canapes will be served.
Venue: The Royal Suite, Grange St Paul’s Hotel, 10 Godliman Street, London EC4V 5AJ
RSVP to: Purvi.Purohit@wits.ac.za
Enquiries: Lynda.Murray@wits.ac.za UK mobile 0757 093 0704
Witsies in the UK
Our Wits Alumni LinkedIn group has hundreds of members in the UK so far and there are thousands of LinkedIn users in the UK who have a Wits connection. You can connect with your fellow Witsies here.
UK honour for architect Denise Scott Brown
The influential architect Denise Scott Brown, who earned her undergraduate diploma in architecture at Wits in 1952 and was awarded an honorary DArch degree in 2011, has been awarded the 2018 Soane Medal for her contributions to the profession. A special lecture in the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, which she designed with Robert Venturi, will be held on 17 October 2018, accompanied by a selection of her architectural photographs.
In these videos, Venturi and Scott Brown discuss their approach and the design of the Sainsbury Wing.
Scott Brown was only 16 when she enrolled at Wits, a time she talks about in this Web of Life video segment.
She is now based in Philadelphia in the US but her Soane lecture will be pre-recorded and delivered at the function in London. Sir David Chipperfield will respond.
Another highly regarded Wits architect, Peter Rich (BArch 1972, MArch 1991), was invited to exhibit at the Venice Biennale of Architecture this year. He talks about his work in this video.
William Kentridge remembers service of Africans in WW1
The artist William Kentridge (BA 1977, DLitt honoris causa 2004) exhibited a project at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in July. Titled The Head and the Load, the performance commemorates the story of the hundreds of thousands of African porters and carriers who served in British, French and German forces during the First World War.
Kentridge speaks in this video about his work and shows the viewer his garden studio space in Johannesburg.
Witsies leading internationally
Jules Constantinou (BSc 1985) is the new president of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK. He spke to The Actuary about potential areas of development for the actuarial profession.
Professor Loyiso Nongxa (BSc Hons 1976, MSc 1978, PhD 1982), former Wits Vice-Chancellor, has been elected as a Vice-President of the International Mathematical Union.
Professor Laetitia Rispel (MSc Med 1991, PhD 1998), former head of the Wits School of Public Health, has been elected as the President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations.
The World Academy of Sciences has elected Wits professors and alumni Bob Scholes (BSc 1978, BSc Hons 1979, PhD 1988) and Shabir Madhi (MBBCh 1990, MMed 1999, PhD 2004) as Fellows and awarded its Medical Sciences prize to alumna Professor Lynn Morris (BSc 1982, BSc Hons 1983). Read more.
Dr Deborah Dunsire (MBBCh 1985) is the new President and CEO of Lundbeck Global, an international pharmaceutical company which specialises in treatment for neurological and psychological diseases such as depression and Alzheimer’s.
Obituaries
The musician Stanley “Spike” Glasser (BCom 1950) passed away in London in August, aged 92. Among his achievements, he was musical director for Todd Matshikiza’s King Kong in 1959.
Harley Street paediatrician Dr Sam Tucker (MBBCh 1952) passed away aged 91.
For more Wits alumni news, click here. Please share your news with us!
Wits news
New Chancellor
Dr Judy Dlamini has been elected the new Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand – the first woman in this role at Wits. She is a medical doctor and businesswoman with a strong interest in education.
The entrepreneurial university
Wits University was selected to host Netrepreneurs: The Rise of Africa’s Digital Lions, an event organised by the Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in support of their mission to grow African economies through entrepreneurship. Just weeks before announcing his retirement as Alibaba executive chair, group founder Jack Ma announced the Jack Ma Foundation Netpreneur Prize at the event in Johannesburg.
Wits Enterprise, the intellectual property arm of the University, has established a new unit, The Entrepreneurial Wayz, to impart entrepreneurial skills and support this way of thinking.
Lesley Donna Williams, CEO of Wits’ Tshimologong digital innovation precinct, explained in this radio interview that the hub aims to create world-class technology to solve local problems. Tshimologong has recently launched a Startup Accelerator – “bootcamp” for new digital enterprises.
Fourth Industrial Revolution
The South African telecommunications company Telkom and three universities – Wits, the University of Johannesburg and the University of Fort Hare – have launched #SA4IR, a partnership to explore how the Fourth Industrial Revolution could shape the futures of South Africa.
Research-intensive university
Public Health Professor Sharon Fonn (MBBCh 1982, DOH 1985, PhD 1989) has written about how to build research-intensive universities in Africa. Wits aspires to be a leading world-class research-intensive university firmly embedded among international top league universities by 2022, its centenary year.
Wits has been ranked first in Africa in the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities and has risen substantially to the position of 204th (from 264th) in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2019. The scores for individual criteria (teaching; research; citations; industry income; international outlook) in the THE ranking have all improved.
Research output at Wits has increased more than 45% over the last five years. This meteoric rise has in no way compromised the quality of output and over 86% of Wits academics continue to publish in quality, international journals. Furthermore, some of the most highly cited and visible researchers, ranked in the top 1% in the world, are based at Wits.
Wits academics and alumni Prof. Ian Jandrell, Dr Musa Manzi and Prof. Stephen Tollman have won prestigious NSTF-South32 Awards, the “Science Oscars” of research in South Africa. They work in the fields of electrical engineering, geosciences and health research management respectively.
Exciting medical research
Wits researchers have made advances in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and haemophilia.
Four scientists in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits recently won South African Medical Research Council Scientific Merit Awards. Their work has focused on malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, HIV and other communicable diseases.
Medical Witsies take skills to rural areas
The Tshemba Foundation offers an opportunity for medical graduates to volunteer and pass on their skills in rural South Africa. It was started by successful Wits alumni.
Human origins collaboration
Wits will be working with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Texas on research and exhibitions focusing on human origins. These include the excavations and findings of palaeontologist Prof Lee Berger (PhD 1994, DSc 2014) in South Africa.
Wits Business School celebrates 50 years
Alumni can share their stories: www.50yearsofwbs.co.za/
Jazz history
Musicologist and jazz historian Dr Lindelwa Dalamba, in the Wits School of Arts, has a particular interest in South African jazz history in exile. This, she says, is a lens for her to study the country’s past. Her PhD from Cambridge University focused on the social and musical dynamics of South African jazz in Britain. Read more.
Books by Witsies
Wits University Press has arrangements for UK distribution. Recent titles include:
- I Want to go Home Forever: Stories of Becoming and Belonging in South Africa’s Great Metropolis, edited by Loren Landau and Tanya Pampalone
- Writing the Ancestral River: A biography of the Kowie, by Jacklyn Cock
Nelson Mandela centenary year
To mark the year in which Nelson Mandela would have turned 100 years old, Wits alumni in the UK were invited to a special preview on 24 July 2018 of an exhibition at the Southbank Centre about the former South African president’s life. Wits UK representative Lynda Murray spoke about Mandela’s time at Wits and the parallels between his circumstances and those of some of our current students 75 years later.
Alumni were also invited to a special screening on 26 July of the documentary Life is Wonderful: Mandela’s Unsung Heroes, by former high court judge Sir Nick Stadlen. The film focuses on the legal defence in the Rivonia Trial, in which several Wits alumni had a part.
A stone was laid in memory of Nelson Mandela in Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was addressed by the South African High Commissioner to the UK, Nomatemba Tambo, a Wits law graduate (LLB 2003) and daughter of Oliver and Adelaide Tambo.
Back in Johannesburg, Wits celebrated Mandela Day (18 July 2018) by collecting items for the Wits Food Bank and laying them out on the Library Lawns in the shape of Madiba’s face. The Wits Food Bank is managed by Wits Citizenship and Community Outreach, which gives hundreds of needy students a hot meal every day and runs a vegetable garden on campus.
The Alumni Relations Office erected a banner in Solomon Mahlangu House to inspire Witsies to “Be the Legacy”.
Wits’ African Centre for the Study of the United States hosted a forum at the University on 27 July to discuss US President Barack Obama’s Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg on June 17.
For more about the connection between Nelson Mandela and Wits, see Issue 5 of Wits’ research magazine, Curios.ty.