Unisa online - College of Human Sciences establishes an African Visiting Schola

On Friday 27 February 2009, the College of Human Sciences will host its first lecture in its African Visiting Scholars' Programme. With this programme, the college would like to give content and effect to the vision of Unisa's role as an African university with an educational outreach and scholarly networks across the African continent. It is designed to break through the isolation engendered by the diverse histories of South Africa and compounded by the isolation often experienced by academics and postgraduate students at a distance learning institution.

The African Visiting Scholars' Programme is designed to stimulate mainly the students’ and emerging academics’ interest in and curiosity about experiences, (dis)locations, histories, languages, (intellectual) traditions and interpellations beyond their own, with which they can connect and interact, and from which they can learn. The college would like to provide opportunities for such learning experiences by inviting African scholars who can act as academic role models to young and emerging researchers and academic teachers in the College of Human Sciences. It is hoped that from such exchange, common ground will be created, from which further research collaboration and scholarly networks will emerge across national, language and institutional-cultural divides.

The African Visiting Scholars’ Programme will take the form of a lecture series within the Scholars’ Development Plan, another initiative of the college introduced in 2008. There will be an African visiting scholar for each month of the year, where possible. Visiting scholars will hold college-wide high-profile lectures in the first instance, to be followed by formally organised and informal occasions for interaction with Unisa's researchers and postgraduate students.

Five such African scholars have already been approached and assigned a role in the programme. The first one is Prof Adebayo Olukoshi, the outgoing Executive Secretary General of CODESRIA. He will inaugurate the lecture series on 27 February 2009. Some of the scholars who have accepted an invitation are Prof Pinkie Mekgwe (CODESRIA’s Research Programmes Officer) for March and Prof Sam Moyo (newly elected President of CODESRIA) for May.

Click here for an invitation to the first lecture.