Mostly, there is a common well-trodden route to obtaining a rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF). Dr Gwenneth Miller, a practising artist and senior lecturer at Unisa’s Department of Arts and Music in the College of Human Sciences, is an exception to this rule.

A first for Unisa, Miller has been awarded a C2 NRF rating through the creative output route – a pathway made possible when the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) began awarding accredited, subsidy-bearing units to universities for their creative outputs.

Assumed Abundance 2017-2018. Oil on canvas. 91.5 x 183 cm. Unisa Art Collection

Miller says: "The DHET recognised that creative research is also valuable."

Unlike most C-rated researchers whose NRF applications are based on written outputs, Miller’s outputs are mostly – but not exclusively – visual. Through artworks, exhibitions, art collaborations and art curatorship, she has built a body of research that has not only earned her a C2 rating, but also brought in subsidy income for Unisa through the creative output system.

Reflecting on the unique NRF rating route

Six years ago, DHET began awarding subsidy-bearing credits to universities for creative research outputs in music, theatre, performance and dance, design, film and television, literary arts, fine arts and visual arts. In the five years that the Department of Arts and Music applied to DHET, 32.0402 outputs have been awarded to Unisa for music and visual arts, and six (18.7%) of those were for works produced by Miller.

Additionally, she curated 13 group exhibitions to encourage creative output amongst artists, further urging staff and master’s and doctoral students to exhibit. Having published an article in an accredited international journal, the South African Journal of Art Historians, Miller committed to conducting research through art production, and to making a concerted effort to claim recognition for practice-led research.

Her contributions have added to a compelling body of creative research that is far from the stereotypes of art as "pretty decorations" that lack academic merit.

Miller has also actively contributed to Unisa’s policy changes to include and acknowledge creative output accreditation as contribution to research. "Peer review is as much a part of the creative outputs process as it is with other research outputs," she notes.

Miller remarks: "The DHET’s creative outputs system made it possible for me to apply for an NRF rating. It mirrors the publishing system and is just as rigorous."

First, each proposed Unisa submission goes through an intensive internal vetting process and is evaluated by two peer reviewers from other universities. Once submitted, it undergoes a second round of peer review by the DHET panel. Should this process result in the allocation of accredited units, these units carry the same subsidy value as more conventional research outputs.

Miller went through the same Unisa vetting process as any other NRF applicant, and, in early 2024, her application was submitted to the NRF for review. On 3 June 2025, she received the good news that she had been awarded a C2 rating.

Ample evidence to support NRF rating application

By 2023, thanks to the creative outputs system, Miller was ready to apply for an NRF rating. "I knew that I had enough units, and I had the evidence to back up my application."

This evidence included work that brought about her creative output units, including her 2020 solo exhibition, Enfolding, and the 2020 group exhibition, Apart/A part, consisting of 29 artworks on grief and loss. The 2021 Gills of other creatures and the 2022 Under the surface research projects consisted of 40 works depicting how communal relationships are naturally core to both human culture and substrates, such as fungi. Her eight-artwork series on Domestic matters, part of which was exhibited in France in July 2023, was also featured.

Furthermore, Miller’s NRF application describes the extensive website she had created for her research, as well as the many exhibitions she had curated, such as Uncanny stories in 2021, presented at the Unisa Art Gallery, and the major Unisa ArtWalk Project on the Science Campus (2021 to 2025).

With Unisa having received its first rating in the creative outputs field, this serves as an inspiration to other academic artists, musicians, writers and the like, to also follow suit.

Click here for Dr Gwenneth Miller’s website.

Congratulations on your rating, Dr Miller.

* By Clairwyn Rapley, Directorate of Research Support