SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND INNOVATION LECTURE SERIES.

BIO INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE MEDICAL AND LIFE SCIENCES: THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT AND EXCITING!

For many years, there has been a keen desire to improve the outputs of academic research in benefiting patients’ lives. This has been a slow process, which often leaves governments frustrated that with so much research funding provided, relatively little is commercialised and thus wasted in terms of community health. In this talk, I will provide insights into what makes projects and start-ups successful based on my own life experience. The translational pathway will be described with the scientific, business and social aspects needed to bring a project to fruition and benefit patients. Most importantly, in this time of the pandemic, it is clear that Innovation & Entrepreneurship are needed more than ever and that the future is bright and exciting for students in the life and medical sciences.

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UTOPIAN THINKING - REVISITING THE IDEAS OF RICK TURNER IN THE CURRENT POLITICAL CONTEXT

REVISITING THE IDEAS OF RICK TURNER IN THE CURRENT POLITICAL CONTEXT

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Turner's book, "The Eye of the Needle".

Keynote Speakers:

Prof Gerhard Mare & Foszia Turner-Stylianou

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Final Walkabout: Seen, Heard and Valued: WAM celebrates 40 years of the Standard Bank African Art Co

Join us this Saturday 26 February from 12h00, a final walkabout on the final day of the wonderful exhibition Seen, Heard and Valued: WAM celebrates 40 Years.

The exhibition includes over 400 artworks and this is your opportunity to hear some of their background stories from WAM's Special Projects Curator, Fiona Rankin-Smith who will lead the walkabout.

In accordance with Covid regulations, only the first 35 visitors who arrive for the tour will be accommodated.

In keeping with the Wits mandatory vaccination policy, please adhere to the following regulations.

Only those who obtain and present their clearance for verification will be permitted to enter WAM.

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Black History Month: Honouring 2022's Changemakers

24 February 2022: An Event to Celebrate Black Health and Wellness and the Changemakers Pushing for Change.

Speakers and topics are:

Krista Johnson (Phd), Howard University: The importance of Black History Month for those in the diaspora and continental Africans and link it to the importance of recognising changemakers on the continent.

Keynote address: Natalie Burke, CommonHealth Action, Social determinants of health pertaining to African Americans and continental Africans.

Recognizing 2022 Changemakers with honorees answering the question: What have been lessonsl earned and/or your north star/guiding principles in making an impact on the socio-economic landscape of South Africa?

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Celebration of Wits Research Excellence

Celebration of Wits Research Excellence

Celebration of research excellence for those that are in receipt of research awards such as rated researchers over the many years but we acknowledge all new rated researchers on an annual basis.  We also acknowledge VCs Research & Innovation Award recipients, Distinguish Professors Programme, Thutuka funding, Sellschop Funding.

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Three former Vice-Chancellors talk about Wits 100

A mathematician, an historian and a political scientist walk into a bar… three former Vice-Chancellors talk about Wits 100

Join us to celebrate the start of Wits’ 100th year, with three former Wits Vice-Chancellors sharing their stories and discussing how Wits’ first 100 years inform its second century.

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Celebrating Wits' 100th at the opening of the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall

Celebrating Wits' 100th at the opening of the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall

Official commencement of the Wits' 100th birthday celebrations at the opening of the new Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall. An evening of jazz, classical and contemporary music performed by staff and students from the Wits School of Arts Music Department.

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Celebrating Wits' 100th at the opening of the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music

Celebrating Wits' 100th at the opening of the Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall

Official commencement of the Wits' 100th birthday celebrations at the opening of the new Wits Chris Seabrooke Music Hall. An evening of jazz, classical and contemporary music performed by staff and students from the Wits School of Arts Music Department.

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1st Wish Congress

Keynote address: Sport and Exercise Medicine: A vision for the future - Jonathan Drezner

Keynote address:
Sex, Drugs and Sporting Gold.
A discussion of sport’s most controversial challenge - the divide between men’s and women’s sport - Ross Tucker

Critical medical issues
Iron & the athlete - deficiency & surplus
Hydration & hyponatraemia
Sudden death in athletes

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Wits Varsity Cup Home Games

Remaining home games for the Wits rugby team in the 2022 Varsity Cup

Wits vs UFS

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Wits Varsity Cup Home Games

Remaining home games for the Wits rugby team in the 2022 Varsity Cup

Wits vs UWC

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Wits Varsity Cup Home Games

Remaining home games for the Wits rugby team in the 2022 Varsity Cup

Wits vs UCT

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Africa's Policy Towards the US

This book is a product of conversations, discussions and debates that took shape from early 2020 as the election season leading to presidential elections.

WELCOME ADDRESS:

Prof Kammila Naidoo, Executive Dean: UJ Faculty of Humanities

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2022 POSTGRADUATE WELCOME DAY

Join us for a full day Postgraduate Experience as we welcome you to your academic journey at Wits University.

Session 1: Faculty Information Session
Online:

Session 2: Welcome Day Ceremony
The Great Hall

Session 3: Cheese and Wine, Theatre Play
Time: 15h00 – 19h00
Cocktail Venue: The Concourse, Solomon Mahlangu House, Braamfontein Campus East

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International Social Work Day and Awards

International Social Work Day and Awards

International Social Work Day is celebrated every year on the third Tuesday of March. The intention is not only to draw attention to the Social work profession but also to social justice matters.

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Symposium: Pandemic preparedness - lessons from the experts, Wednesday 23 March 2022, 2 pm - 6 pm

Symposium: Pandemic preparedness - lessons from the experts, Wednesday 23 March 2022, 2 pm - 6 pm

Join the authors of Pandemics and Healthcare: Principles, Processes and Practices as they bring together many of the lessons learnt from the outset of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in an attempt to equip pandemic planning and prevention programmes as we move into the future.

Hosted by the editors of the book, Professors Ames Dhai, Daynia Ballot, and Martin Veller, this one-day symposium features prominent guest speakers and a keynote address by the Dean of the Wits Faculty of Health Science and Professor of Vaccinology, Shabir Madhi.

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Data Science lunch time chat with Prof. Matthew Chersich

The role of data science in driving the health sector response to the climate crisis: The HEAT Center and HIGH Horizons projects.

Matthew Chersich works as a Research Professor in the Directorate of Climate and Health at Wits RHI. His career spans more than 20 years working in public health research in Africa. Matthew’s work on climate change centers on quantifying the impacts of high temperatures on maternal health and interventions to reduce those impacts. His training encompassed clinical medicine at Wits, public health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and doctoral studies at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He is leading the HEAT Center, a new data science project across Africa within the NIH DS-I Africa Initiative, and is co-leading several other climate and health projects.

Agenda

• Welcome and Introduction • Speaker: Prof. Matthew Chersich • Questions • Closing 

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FameLab Talking Science

Welcome to FameLab! For many of you, this will be the beginning of a new journey in the rewarding world of science engagement. We hope you enjoy the experience.

FameLab is programme that aims to develop science communication skills, and more specifically public speaking skills, in young scientists (ages 21-35). While it takes the format of a competition, it is primarily a development initiative. This means that it’s perfectly fine to feel like you are stepping out of your comfort zone. For many participants, it is their first exposure to science communication and presenting to a public audience outside their science community.

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"The Archive Machine: The Truth Commission and the Archaeology of Apartheid."

Presented by Jacob Dlamini

The Wits Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities is a widely interdisciplinary and lively research forum.  Its objective is to strengthen and enrich the interaction between local research and global scholarship, and to make this a more productive dialogue.  The seminar is typically an animated, demanding and constructive forum.  Participants are particularly encouraged to frame their work and questions theoretically and to think sympathetically beyond their own disciplinary and regional specialisations.

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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Challenges for a Negotiated Peace

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Challenges for a Negotiated Peace, Denuclearisation and Demilitarisation

On 24th February the Russian Federation launched a full scale and illegal invasion of Ukraine. Cities and towns have become battlefields. A humanitarian crisis has ensued and the risk of nuclear war looms large. The Putin regime has placed nuclear forces on alert and so has the US-led NATO Alliance. A nuclear war will be an extinct event. How is South Africa engaging with this situation? What can be learned from wars in Africa for a negotiated peace? How do we prevent a 'new Cold War' spiral into endless global warfare which prevents the world from addressing the worsening climate crisis?

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Critical Thought, Human Rights and Freedom in the Middle East in 2020s

WiSER Invites you to an online Panel discussion on Critical Thought, Human Rights and Freedom in the Middle East in 2020s

The Middle East region has been a juncture of political violence, ethnic and sectarian tensions, authoritarian rise and rivalries between external powers and regional countries in the last decades. This seminar will cover issues surrounding state hegemony, gender-based inequalities, border and migration regimes as well as social movements, freedom of speech and politics and governance of info-tech and media in the region. Field experts` insight will help conceive the current changing dynamics in the region and highlight the role of CSOs, human rights defenders, activists and knowledge workers through a comparative lens. A final focus will be on the way forward for critical knowledge futures: Along with input from the audience, we will discuss the impact of the expanding diaspora on politics of the Global South and draw upon possibilities of South-South exchange and collaboration.

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The Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy

His Excellency, President Cyril Ramaphosa to deliver the keynote address.

E The Oxford Handbook of THE SOUTH AFRICAN ECONOMY
Edited by Arkebe Oqubay, Fiona Tregenna, and Imraan Valodia,
it is the first comprehensive handbook of the South African economy. The book provides detailed and wide-ranging coverage of the key economic questions in South Africa, concentrating on
the more recent economic challenges facing the country.

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"Cultural Property and The Question of Repatriation."

Please read the paper at https://wiser.wits.ac.za.

Abstract : From one perspective repatriation is understood as the return of stolen property to its original owners. Which is a legal model. But from another repatriation is not about legal property but rather about the theft of a past which then was used to shore up European national heritage and the European nation state in a way that proved its superiority over native populations. Objects stolen, by a vast irony, became props in the belittling of their place of creation. Hence the demand for return.This is not a legal issue but a moral, political and economic one. Sometimes the two perspectives--legal v. moral/political and economic-- converge, but many times not. The two perspectives must be kept carefully separate for debates around repatriation to be properly negotiated. I will try to do this in what follows, finally focusing on questions of reparation, historical debt and economic inequality. These questions are closely connected to those of rights and responsibilities, themselves not always correlative since one may claim a responsibility to X even if one does not believe X has the right. I think this is central to the issue of historical debt, where the questions of who has what rights are contestable in a way that perhaps precludes resolution.

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Calling All Scientists

Are you passionate about science communication and think you can be the next international Science Pop Idol?

THE SEARCH IS ON FOR THE NEXT SCIENCE POP IDOL!

Here is a great opportunity for brave and talented young
scientists who think they can explain a science concept in just
3 minutes. If you can excite, intrigue and entertain with your
science, then come battle it out with other hopefuls.

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Africa-US Cities and Internationalisation: city-to-city relations and cities as international actors

This hybrid event will serve as a curtain raiser for the Africa-US cities and internationalisation conference on 21 and 22 February 2023.

Speakers

Dr Bob Wekesa, Deputy Director at the African Centre for the Study of the United States.

TOPIC: The Diplomacy of Africa-US Cities.

Ms. Lorna Johnson - SCI Africa Regional Representatives Change Tanzania.

TOPIC: Evolution of US-Africa Sister Cities Partnerships.

Professor Patricia Cummins, Virginia Commonwealth University.

TOPIC: Cities, research and partnerships

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"Macroeconomic determinants of South Africa’s post-apartheid income distribution."

Abstract : South Africa’s distributive regime is striking to all who observe it. This paper situates developments in post-apartheid income distribution.

The distribution of market income has undergone developments at the sector level post-apartheid that have received little attention. While the aggregate wage share remains close to its initial level at the start of democracy, the wage share in mining is 12 percent lower than at the beginning of 1993, after recovering somewhat from a nearly 20 percent decline over the commodity boom period. The ratio of consumer prices to sector level producer prices is the ‘wedge’ between real consumption and real product wage rates and in theory a key relative price determining distributive outcomes. In sectors like mining, where real product and real consumption wage rates may depart in significant part, workers may not easily observe the real product wage and nominal productivity shocks may weakly carry through to wages. Other sectors (as defined in the national accounts) have different dynamics. The wage share in manufacturing has stabilized at a level nearly 20 percent higher than where it was in 2005. In utilities, the wage share resembles a mountain with a steep climb during the first fifteen years of democracy and a sharp cliff edge around the Great Recession. This paper reviews existing debates about macroeconomic policy and performance, before considering evidence from autoregressive distributed-lag and error correction models. The conventional wisdom underlying progressive advocacy for a better performing and more equitable macroeconomy are not in keeping with the data presented here, nor a closer reading of the policy debates it has drawn inspiration from. This calls for reorienting the focus of radical policy critique from insufficient state allocation of resources toward social policy to a critique concerning the post- apartheid state’s failure to mobilize the necessary resources to drive forth rapid structural transformation.

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Christine Dixie - Blueprint for the DisOrder of Things

Indigo, the colour used for a “blueprint” is central to this exhibition. Working across multiple media, artists books, monoprints, ‘veils’ and a video.

This body of work plays on the title of Michel Foucault’s book The Order of Things. Many of the iterations incorporate the text Las Meninas, the first chapter of The Order of Things.

Started during the first hard lockdown in 2020, it is a body of work driven by the emotional, social, and political changes that have come about as a result of Covid-19. The texts throughout the exhibition are disrupted as a metaphor for the way in which the ordered world has been rendered one of DisOrder.

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Vital Elements: Post_colonial Flows and Forensics as an Art of Paying Attention

WiSER invites you to the third lecture of our new PUBLIC POSITIONS SERIES Amade M’charek (Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)

Amade M’charek (Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)

Vital Elements: Post_colonial Flows and Forensics as an Art of Paying Attention

In this address I want to narrate several stories that can help us grasp that magnitude of death and dying in the Mediterranean Sea. An attempt to narrate the crisis away, and to attend to the chronicity of Europe’s ongoing (post)colonial involvement on the African continent. In these stories of encounter on the beaches of Zarzis, a harbor town at the southern coast of Tunisia, my entry points are (traces of) bodies that wash ashore. Following material traces, such as, worn-out sneakers, slippers, clothing and toys, I suggest a broadening of the notion of forensics. From a practice of delivering evidence about a single event, to an art of paying attention, to attend to the convoluted and chronic nature of what we are witnessing. The latter is a move towards materiality and the durability of extractive and colonial relations.

Respondent: Hlonipha Mokoena (WiSER)

4^th May 2022

16.00 - 17:30 (SA time)

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A Play in (South) Africa: Towards a translation history of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

A Play in (South) Africa: Towards a translation history of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

South African theatre icon John Kani has declared that Julius Caesar is “Shakespeare’s African play”. While this assertion enables some appealing comparisons and analogies, it also reinforces certain essentialist claims about “Africa”. Is there another approach to the phenomenon of Julius Caesar in Africa that avoids such generalisations?
In this lecture, Professor Thurman will argue that there is, and that it entails mapping out a history of translations of the play into African languages. Doing so reveals a story that is partly pan-African but also demands attention to specific times and places, as well as to the idiosyncracies of particular translators. Professor Thurman will show how such an undertaking fits into the research, archival and creative agenda of the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre in the School of Literature, Language and Media.

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Karl Von Holdt

The making and unmaking of social order: disorder, violence, trajectories

We are living in a society which is continuously being made and unmade, made and remade, in a dynamic, contested set of processes that generate confusions, disorder and confrontations – frequently violent. Thinking about this poses problems for sociology (and the social sciences more generally). We are trained to see the pattern in things, to try and discern their underlying structures and forces. We tend to be more comfortable with thinking through a frame of social structure and social order rather than rupture, confrontation, breakdown. Perhaps we need to rethink our categories and concepts, to destabilise them and remake them as well so that they are adequate to the task of understanding the world. In this lecture I reflect on the development of my thinking through 30 years of research on trade unions, communities, violence, corruption and the state, which has also been 30 years of activism to remake the world.

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NASA scientist visits Wits to talk about STEM gender gap

NASA scientist visits Wits to talk about STEM gender gap

The African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), in partnership with the United States Consulate General Johannesburg, invites you to a talk on gender equity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in the United States and South Africa.

The conversation will be led by Bianca Rhym, NASA Electronics
Engineer at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, currently visiting South Africa for a conference on STEM education.

Ms. Bianca Rhym is an Electrical Engineer, and subject matter expert in Electrical Power Systems, Communications & Tracking, and Utilization. She is the JFK Space Center's electrical ground processing specialist for the International Space Station program.

DATE: 25 April 2022
TIME: 14.30pm (SAST)
Humanities Graduate Centre
Wits University, Campus East

RSVP to Beth Amato

Email: Beth.amato@wits.ac.za by no later than 24^th April. 

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BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION

BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION

Celebrate WORLD BOOK DAY

with the in-person launch of Siphiwo Mahala's biography of

Can Themba
The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi

Siphiwo Mahala will be in conversation with Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko
and Sello Maake kaNcube will perform a short extract from Can Themba's The Suit.

When: Saturday 23 April 2022 @ 13H30 for 14h00

Venue: Sun International Auditorium,
The Kerzner, Auckland Park, University of Johannesburg,
Bunting Road Campus

RSVP: info.witspress@wits.ac.za by noon on Fri 22/04

Proof of vaccination will be required

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Australian Friends of Wits University

A unique Wits Centenary Cocktail Event with special guests of honour via Zoom with Q&A.

Guest speakers:

Dr Judy Dlamini
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi (via zoom)

Facilitator:

Lawrence Jackson
Wits Australia Representative

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Data Science lunch time chat with Dr Ndivhuwo Makondo

The Title of Dr Makondo's talk is Logical Neural Networks and Neuro-Symbolic AI

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Democracy in Africa - A Review of Biden's Summit for Democracy

A review of Biden’s Summit for Democracy in 2021: US-Africa perspectives.

PANELISTS

Ms. Sanusha Naidu - Institute on Global Dialogue

Dr. Nicodemus Minden - Social Science Academic and Analyst

Dr. Efem N Ubi - Nigerian Institute of International Affairs

Dr. Philani Mthembu - Executive Director at the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) associated with UNISA & Co-founder: Berlin Forum on Global Politics.

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Launch of the FabLab

Wits is celebrating its Centenary this year. We are looking to the next 100 years to continue to contribute to South Africa's socio-economic transformation.

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Elizabeth Mavhunga

THE PATH TRODDEN BY SCIENCE TEACHER PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS DIGITALIZATION

Prof. Elizabeth Mavhunga is a science teacher educator and a rated researcher in the Wits School of Education.  Her Inaugural lecture will reflect on the research struggles and successes in making explicit science teacher professional knowledge for teaching particular topics, a tacit construct theorised as Topic Specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TSPCK). All done in the context of poor learner achievement in Science in South Africa.  TSPCK is uniquely the domain of teachers and enables them to transform abstract content into a form that can easily be understood by their learners.  In her talk, she will elucidate the implications of the migration of teaching to digital platforms and provide possible solutions for a refined version of TSPCK which is responsive to the teaching of Science concepts in the digital realm.

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Elizabeth Mavhunga

The title of Professor Mavhunga is The Path Trodden by Science Teacher Professional Knowledge Towards Digitalization

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Advocating for nursing education scholarship: From Promise to Praxis

The impact of education and research on nursing practice is undisputable as the role of nursing professionals continue to evolve and expand.

To respond to changing disease profiles and advances in health care, nurse educators regularly review and renew educational programmes and strategies to prepare professional nurses, including developing their capacity for specialist practice. Advocating for nursing education and sharing ones scholarship, brings about new ideas or models that can be tested, refined or replicated; ultimately, building evidence for the advancement of nursing education, and developing nursing’s potential in a more intentional, practical and evidence-informed manner.

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International Museums Day

Wednesday 18 May is International Museum Day and entrance to Origins Centre

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INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN UNIVERSITIES

Professor Peter Dobson Professor Emeritus University of Oxford, UK

This talk is really a commentary on how the Universities in the UK are adapting to teach
”innovation” and to put in place an eco-system that encourages students (and academics) to think about the responsible exploitation of new ideas emerging from research. The conditions that led to the speaker setting up a new type of Science Park in Oxford will be outlined, along with his personal experience in the setting up of several new spin-off companies. There is no magic “best way” to exploit University research and almost every example will require some flexibility and this will be illustrated by examples.

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A personal journey into the heart of the atomic nucleus

The Physics Head of School, Professor Deena Naidoo invites you to a talk delivered by the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Witwatersrand

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Colonial Problems in Surveillance Studies

WiSER invites you to an online discussion.

This panel examines a paradox that lurks in the recent global arguments that surveillance capitalism marks the adoption -- in the Anglophone North especially -- of colonial methods of value expropriation.  The same scholarship systematically ignores the actual conditions of knowledge production and state-building under colonialism, and afterwards, that are producing very powerful (and potentially dangerous) tools of automated assessment and tracking on the African and Asian continents.  Cláudio Muniz Machado Cavalcanti, Georges Eyenga, Zehra Hashmi and Tunde Okunoye will be in discussion with Keith Breckenridge on the geopolitics of surveillance capitalism.

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Future Inevitable - The Secular Tense of Technoscience at the End of the World

Technoscience with promises of immortality and space colonies.

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Gender and Climate Justice in Xolobeni

WISER invites you to join them for an on-line version of the WISH seminar

The title of the seminar is "'Grass in the cracks': Gender, social reproduction and climate justice in the Xolobeni struggle."

By Shireen Hassim and Beth Goldblatt

You can read the paper at https://wiser.wits.ac.za

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Wits Physics Open Days

Interactive demonstrations and guided lab tours where researchers talk about cutting edge research, it's all happening at the School of Physics.

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The 13th Cross-Faculty Postgraduate Symposium 2022

The Postgraduate Affairs Office informs all Masters and PhD students that the 13th Wits Cross-Faculty Postgraduate Symposium competition will take place online.

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A quest to save the "world's lungs"

Professors Kurt Sartorius and Wayne Van Zijl are set to paddle 1100km down the Amazon's Madeira River to raise awareness and funding to combat climate change

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Citizen and Pariah - Somali Traders and the Regulation of Difference in South Africa

Join author Vanya Gastrow and Abdikadir Mohamed on the launch of their book

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Nicky Falkof's New Book - Worrier State

Worrier State - Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa

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Climate Health Africa Network for Collaboration and Engagement

Wits RHI Climate and Health Directorate is pleased to announce the upcoming conference

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Data Science Lunch Time Chat

Professor Scott Hazelhurst will talk about MADIVA – Using data science for managing complex health problems in Africa

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Managing a national response to Covid-19: A game-changer for Teacher Education

Professor Lee Rusznyak is a leading teacher educator based at the School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand.

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The Origin of Life

Tickets include full access to the museum and temporary exhibitions. FoodArt restaurant will be open.

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Giant Handaxes: Centenary Objects Exhibition & Public Lecture by Dr Matthew Caruana

Dr Matthew Caruana will give a lecture titled ‘The Life and Times of Acheulean Hominins: Technology, Cognition and Sociality

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No need to wait! Strategic nutraceutical use in early life for good metabolic health

Join Prof Erlwanger for his Inaugural Lecture No need to wait! Strategic nutraceutical use in early life for good metabolic health

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Why South Africa bid to host the SKA telescope

Join Dr Rob Adam for his lecture on Why South Africa bid to host the SKA telescope

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Mental Health Museum Walkabout with Dr Kirti Ranchod

Join neurologist, Dr Kirti Ranchod, on an interactive museum walkabout at Origins Centre

This interactive walkabout will focus on resources available within our traditions, cultures and communities that can nurture better emotional wellbeing and provide practical tools for better health.

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Public Lecture: How South African Scientists Studied Race by Prof Alan Morris

Prof Morris is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Human Biology at the University of Cape Town

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Gold-bearing Quartz: Centenary Objects Exhibition & Public Lecture by Prof Richard Viljoen

From 10h00 to 11h00 Professor Richard Viljoen will give a lecture about Witwatersrand gold, mining and geology at Wits. Specimens viewed between 11h00 and 16h00

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Decolonisations of Literature

Stefan Helgesson will be in conversation with Dan Ojwang (Wits University), Fabio Durão(UNICAMP, São Paulo) and Jane Hiddleston (Oxford University)

Chair: Sarah Nuttall (WISER)

Decolonisations of Literature sets out to understand how the meaning of ‘literature’ was transformed in the global South in the post-1945 era. It looks at institutional contexts in South Africa (mainly Johannesburg), Brazil (São Paulo), Senegal (Dakar) and Kenya (Nairobi), and engages with critical writing in English, Portuguese and French. Critics studied in the book include Antonio Candido, Tim Couzens, Isabel Hofmeyr, Es’kia Mphahlele, Léopold Senghor, Taban Lo Liyong and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. By reading these intellectuals of the global South as producers of theory and practice in their own right, the book attempts to demonstrate the contingency of what is here called the worlding of the concept of literature. ‘Decolonisation’ itself is seen as a contingent, non-linear process that unfolds in a recursive dialogue with the past. In a bid to offer a more grounded approach to world literature, a key objective of this study is therefore to investigate the accumulation of temporalities in institutional histories of critical practice.

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Critical Thought, Human Rights and Freedom in the Middle East in 2020s

Panel discussion on Critical Thought, Human Rights and Freedom in the Middle East in 2020s. Moderator and Organizer: Asli Telli

Speakers

Janroj Yilmaz Keles: Digital Authoritarianism and Symbolic Violence

Ayse Durakbasa: Violations of Human Rights and Gender Equality under the Authoritarian Regime in Turkey and the Middle East

Begüm Basdas: No Future in Sight: Governance of Migration and the Rights of People on the Move

Iginio Gagliardone: Politics and Governance of Info-Tech in the Global South: A Comparative Perspective

Asli Telli: The impact of religious authoritarianism on critical thought and media (wrap-up)

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The Ends of War : Homecoming for the Indian Soldier and Follower, 1914–21

Seminar presented by Radhika Singha

This is the concluding chapter from my new book, The Coolie's Great War.  Though largely invisible in histories of the First World War, over  550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian army were non-combatants. From the porters, stevedores and construction workers in the Coolie Corps to those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, The book recovers the story of this unacknowledged service. The labour regimes built on the backs of these ‘coolies’ sustained the military infrastructure of empire; their deployment in interregional arenas bent to the demands of global war. Viewed as racially subordinate and subject to ‘non-martial’ caste designations, they fought back against their status, using the warring powers’ need for manpower as leverage to challenge traditional service hierarchies and wage differentials. The Coolie’s Great War views that global conflict through the lens of Indian labour, constructing a distinct geography of the war—from tribal settlements and colonial jails, beyond India’s frontiers, to the battlefronts of France and Mesopotamia.

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Youth Day Celebrations at Origins Centre

Join the Origins Centre to celebrate Youth Day

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Technologies of Consciousness for Human-centred Water Resources Management

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, Professor Lynn Morris, cordially invites you to the Inaugural Lecture of Professor John Ndiritu

John Ndiritu is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment and a Fellow of the Water Institute of Southern Africa.

The title of his talk is Technologies of Consciousness for Human-centred Water Resources Management

Achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of UN Agenda 2030 relating to water calls for more human-centred water resources management that involves all stakeholders. Human-water dynamics have been studied and applied in water resource decision-making for decades and sociohydrology has been recently conceived to refine this further. While sociohydrology incorporates the dynamic change of human behaviour in response to changes in water systems, there has been no consideration of the potential of the psychological practices that enhance resilience and decision-making abilities. Mindfulness and other contemplative practices are widely applied as enablers of inner coherence and resilience in educational, health care, political, public policy, and other settings. Published research on these techniques has also increased exponentially in the last two decades and there is evidence that they could be applied to enhance crop yield significantly. How applicable are these contemplative techniques towards meeting water-related SDGs?

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Title: Web based exploratory geospatial-temporal analytics

Data Science Lunch Time Chat with Richard Young

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Hennops River Clean Up

Activities will include presentations and speeches by different organisations/individuals. Citizen Science activities. Clean-up activities

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Walkabout: TENX10 at Wits Art Museum

Join us on Sat 02 July from 13:00 for a walkabout of the current exhibition TENX10: 100 artworks, by women and gender diverse artists, from WAM collections.

Fiona Rankin-Smith, who is the Special Projects Curator at WAM, will be leading the walkabout.

Diverse artworks from the past 10 decades are on display. Come and discover the variety of techniques and materials in works by well-known artists and artists whose names we do not know, along with artworks by individual artists and those by artists’ collectives.

WAM is open to the public from Tuesday to Saturday, from 10:00 – 16:00. 

Wear a mask, keep a safe social distance and sanitise regularly.

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Modern Era Imaging with PET/CT - A Gift from the Gods

Join Professor Mboyo-Di-Tamba Vangu for his Inaugural Lecture

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Wits Mandela Day in Wits 100 Style

The University will commemorate Mandela Day on 22 July. Have fun while contributing to the Wits Food Bank.

13:00 – 14:00 main event; drop-off of items 10:00 – 14:00

Wear your Wits 100 T-shirt, bring your contribution (small or big) and stand a chance to win prizes/vouchers during the quiz.

The Wits challenge is to collect as many donations of food cans and toiletries in order to build a ‘Wits 100’ Mandela Day image on a canvas on the Library Lawns. This compete pic will be visible from the sky and photographed with a drone. Donations will thereafter go to the Food Bank ready for second semester to support students in need.

Help stop food insecurity on campus. 

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Data Science Lunch Time Chat with Professor Zeblon Vilakazi

Title : Big Data and Big Science

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Wits infrastructure and Sustainability Discussion

Wits infrastructure and sustainability: campus business continuity considerations in the face of the national electricity crisis

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Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House

This roundtable features Isabel Hofmeyr in conversation with Jacquelyne Kosgei, Lesley Green and Stephanie Jones.

Dockside Reading is interested in the links between print culture, colonialism, and the ocean. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dockside customs officials would leaf through publications looking for obscenity, politically objectionable materials, or reprints of British copyrighted works, often dumping these condemned goods into the water. These practices, echoing other colonial imaginaries of the ocean as a space for erasing incriminating evidence of the violence of empire, informed later censorship regimes under apartheid in South Africa. By tracking printed matter from ship to shore, Hofmeyr shows how literary institutions like copyright and censorship were shaped by colonial control of coastal waters. Set in the environmental context of the colonial port city, Dockside Reading explores how imperialism colonizes water.

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Talking Monkey Pox: A Second Pandemic or One to Ignore

Join the WSBS for a lecture on Monkey Pox with Professor Lucille Blumberg from the NICD! You don’t want to miss it!

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CAN-DO Chameleons - Critical Caring: Breathing Life into the System

This session is focused on "CARE" and the caring work at the heart of our health systems.

Speakers:

Salimah Valiani, PhD

Independent Researcher, Poet Winner of the international book awards 2022. Prize, contemporary. Poetry category [for 29 leads to love], recipient of the 2012 feminist economics rhonda williams prize. Research Monographs: Rethinking Unequal Exchange - The Global Integration of Nursing Labour Markets. The Africa Care Economy Index. Edited Volume: The Future of Mining in South Africa - Sunset or Sunrise? Poetry Collections: 29 leads to loved; Cradles, Land of the Sky, Letter Out: Letter In, and breathing for breadth.

Mia Jansen van Rensburg

Mia Jansen van Rensburg is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Johannesburg. Growing up with a doctor-in-the-making for a sister, she developed a keen interest in the lives of medical professionals in South Africa, and her current research concerns emergency medical services personnel in Johannesburg. Her academic interest in the political economy of health runs parallel to her concerns regarding the working conditions, safety, and dignity of healthcare providers in South Africa.

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Simon Mukwembi

Professor Ruksana Osman, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, cordially invites you to the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Simon Mukwembi.

From graph theory to drug design: predictive models for target identification and selection.

Most drugs fail their functions for two main reasons: firstly, they simply do not work and, secondly, they are not safe. Selecting the best compounds for drug design is not an easy task because the number of compounds in plants and synthetic libraries is almost infinite. In this lecture, I give an overview of how graph theory, a fast-growing branch of pure mathematics, and mathematical modelling can be used to develop prototype activity predicting models in drug design. I, in process, develop a model that ranks the anti-skin cancer abilities of compounds. Using the model, compounds are identified that are superior to some well-known standard anti-skin cancer agents.

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Planetary Health: How Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss Change the Equation

Lecture is hosted by the Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality at Wits University, Wits Rural Knowledge Hub and MRC/WITS Agincourt Unit

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Notes, Melodies, and a Whole Lot of WITSIES

The Wits Choir are excited to present this free concert.

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor AO Ihunwo

Title: Generating New Neurons in the Adult Brain: Where do we stand?

Cell proliferation in the adult brain was an unacceptable concept over half a decade ago. Once this dogma was revoked, it became necessary to establish the phenomenon of adult neurogenesis in the adult brain which declines with age. We have provided the empirical data for the confirmation of this process in the adult mammalian and avian species strengthening the acceptance of such a phenomenon. Beyond this the question now becomes the functionality and the factors that can influence this process positively to warrant a continuous engagement in research and adjustment in lifestyle for better functioning of the adult brain.

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Genomic surveillance during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as a model for informing public health

Agenda • Welcome and Introduction • Speaker: Dr Jinal Bhiman • Questions • Closing

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Professor Matthew Chersich Inaugural Lecture

Climate Change and Maternal Health in Africa: From Thermal Physiology to Public Health and Advocacy

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Profit with Purpose - How a proud Witsie has built a firm that changes markets and lives

Your are invited to a private virtual boardroom event with Dr Andy Kuper AO

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Data Science Lunch Time Talk with Nelson Bore

Disease Progression Modelling workbench 360 (DPM360)

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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Mfaniseni Sihlongonyane

TITLE OF LECTURE: Ubuntuising Planning in the Age of Urban Anxiety

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71st Bernard Price Memorial Lecture

As AI advances in capabilities and moves into the real world, its potential to benefit humanity seems limitless.

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Did climate change cause the Durban floods?

SPEAKER: Francois Engelbrecht Director and Professor of Climatology at the Global Change Institute (GCI) University of the Witwatersrand

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Prof. Jonah Choiniere - Palaeontology in a big-data context

Agenda • Welcome and Introduction • Speaker: Prof. Jonah Choiniere • Questions • Closing

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Executing and Writing Publishable Systematic Reviews of Research

Presented by : PROFESSOR PHILIP HALLINGER

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Celebrating African Composers: Mzilikazi Khumalo

The concert will also present music by some leading African composers influenced by Mzilikazi Khumalo's work.

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A Choir on a Hill - Wits Choir Celebrates 60 years

A music festival during which the Choir will perform songs from its 60-year history.

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The SAIMechE - John Orr Memorial Lecture

Title of Lecture : "Merging Keynes, Markets & Big Data for Accelerated Growth in New Jobs"

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Data Science Lunch Time Chat with Prof. Francois Engelbrecht

AGENDA • Welcome and Introduction • Speaker: Prof. Francois Engelbrecht • Questions • Closing

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