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Where is #Ekhaya for you?

- Wits University

Our homegrown research crosses borders in Curios.ty, the 7th issue of Wits' research magazine, as we explore the concept of #Ekhaya (isiZulu for ‘home’).

Curios.ty [Issue 7]: #Ekhaya (isiZulu for ‘home’) is now available online: www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/.

Curiosity, Issue 7: #Ekhaya --- www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/The concept of ‘home’ is as subjective as it is tangible. Our homegrown research crosses borders in #Ekhaya and it explores the physical spaces we inhabit, where we feel we belong, where we are from and what we identify with, including the physical/psychological space we may return to – or reject.

Highlights include:

  1. Homes of the future (Page 8) and An eye on assistive tech at home (page 12): Our homes of the future may be hyper-connected pods; and we’ll use brain-connected computer interfaces to control our environments with our eyes.
  2. This land is my land (Page 18): The general elections in 2019 served as a platform for land redress to be discussed, promised and instilled in the collective consciousness of South Africans. Is land ownership the silver bullet to address inequality in a country that so many call home?
  3. Coming home to South Africa (Page 28) and Home is where the heart is (Page 42): Migration and immigration are unpacked in these two stories, that asks: When does a house become a home? How long do you have to stay in a country to be afforded the same rights as those born locally? How has the migrant labour system shaped family life in South Africa?
  4. At home in your skin (Page 30): For a million bucks, would you change your gender? Meet B Camminga, postdoctoral student at Wits, who poses the gender question to their* students as a way to get directly to the heart of how skewed the modern world is towards the binary of ‘he’ and ‘she’. [*The pronoun ‘they’ is used to describe people who ‘identify as neither male nor female’].

This issue also features research-based stories about the places humans first called home, how housing quality has changed in sub-Saharan Africa, and how we share spaces through back yarding and with the homeless.

ABOUT CURIOS.TY

Curiosity is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. Available on the Wits website here: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/

Copyright and to republish our articles

© All material in this publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction of any part of the publication is permitted only with the express written permission of the Head of Communications at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. For permissions, send an email to curiosity@wits.ac.za.

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