Programme 1: Social Cohesion, Reconciliation and Social Justice


Join the University of the Free State to deepen scholarship on the human embrace with a national and international team of highly-qualified academics and practitioners in this intellectually stimulating and practically innovative programme.  

The purpose of this programme is to provide development opportunities for academics, professionals and practitioners to advance social critique and social justice-directed transformation in various contexts. This programme is ideally suited for persons working in public and private institutions, community and non-governmental organisations, social movements, regional and transnational structures, and those pursuing careers across a variety of social justice fields.

Nationally and internationally we are faced with development and societal challenges that require critical and multi-faceted scholarly practices for: rethinking the social and its heterogeneity; studying the social dynamics of disrespect, disaffiliation, vulnerability, precarisation, solidarity, integration, friendship and intimacy; exploring the structures of social domination, material insecurity and public turbulence; and crafting possibilities for social justice agency through transformative praxes across the various sectors of society. As a critical enterprise, your study will revisit and redefine current notions of reconciliation, social cohesion, inclusivity, social justice, human rights, diversity and citizenship in a changing world by applying interdisciplinary approaches to its analyses and practice.

Both the master's and doctoral programmes require a full research dissertation/thesis, and students will also be expected to attend specialist cohort sessions on agreed-upon times. This programme is open to all students with background studies in the economic and management sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, social sciences, law, education, theology, and so on, including those in the heritage, development, human rights, transitional justice and peace sectors; and candidates in the cultural and creative industries.

Programme 2: Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation

This research programme focuses on critical analyses of higher-education transformation that study inclusion and exclusion in relation to:

  • The social structure of the academy
  • The power relations embedded within the organisation of knowledge, its disciplines, and disciples 
  • The construction of professional and student identities 
  • The regulation of student life and voice, staff and student access and success 
  • The mechanics of authority within knowledge-generation processes, research subjects, objects, topics, and trends 
  • Pedagogical typologies 
  • The interplay between pedagogy, research, and institutional culture
  • The connextionist dynamics between higher education and the state, private sector, interest groups, pressure formations, and broader society.

Programme 3: Human Rights and Critical Human Rights Education

The objectives of this research programme:

  • Deepen the study of human rights in higher education and in society in general
  • Study human rights and its violation globally
  • Generate comparative and international research initiatives on the scholarship of human rights education within various socio-political contexts
  • Engender creative approaches by which human rights can be enriched by interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary approaches
  • Prompt inquiry into the linkages between human rights and peace, conflict, development, multiculturalism, citizenship, and democracy.

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