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DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Social Policy

The award of the SARChI Chair in Social Policy to the University of South Africa was finalised by the National Research Foundation in February 2013 and the Chair Holder, Professor Jimi O. Adesina took up the position in Pretoria in July 2013.

Framework of Activities at the SARChI Chair in Social Policy

The activities of the Chair are organised in three clusters: research, postgraduate education, and policy outreach (community engagement). The research programme of the SARChI Chair in Social Policy will be organised under the theme of Rethinking Social Policy: in search of inclusive development. Under this, we have the sub-themes of Rethinking Poverty and Non-forma Social Provisioning. The integration of the research and postgraduate education components of the work of the Chair is framed by the adoption of the laboratory model. This involves research staff, research associates, and graduate students working in clusters that are focused on specific research projects.

A distinct focus of the research and graduate education aspects of the work of the Chair is averting extraversion in the new generation of scholars and producing works that are distinctly epistemic in their contribution to global social policy scholarship. It involves a methodological commitment to endogeneity and mining local data for their theoretical significance and contributions to global scholarship and policy practices.

The work of the SARChI Chair in Social Policy is framed by the concept of Transformative Social Policy. This sets apart the work under the Chair from the dominant discourse in Social Policy, framed by the Welfare Regime Paradigm or the Social Protection Paradigm. The Chair is establishing two new research projects on Social Policy Dimensions of the Land and Agrarian Reform (under its Rethinking Social Policy Programme) and the study of Stokvel/eSuSu (under the Non-Formal Social Provisioning sub-theme).