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25 April 2018 Photo Supplied
UFS Debate Society to compete in upcoming World Championships
The UFS Debate Society is a diverse, cross-boundary team of UFS students who are not strangers to success, and who are exceptionally brilliant at what they do. Before winning the largest open debating competition in Africa in 2018, the team had qualified and competed in the finals for three consecutive years since 2015. The society has now been selected to compete in the Cape Town Open Debating Competition this coming weekend from 27 to 29 April, in a build-up to the World Championships taking place in December 2018.

According to the UFS Debate Society Chairperson, Tshiamo Malatji: “Thinking artistically about debating requires one to make use of creative reasoning, and essentially, lateral thinking is of importance, even in your everyday life conversations, because you will never fundamentally agree with someone who has opinions which are opposed to yours, but you will be able to appreciate where they are coming from.”

The team is also involved in organising dialogues on our Bloemfontein Campus, such as the Student Rights Dialogue, which brings together various stakeholders of the university for a discussion about human rights. They also conduct debating workshops and, together with the Department of Basic Education, function as judges for debates in the broader Bloemfontein community for less advantaged schools in Botshabelo, Thaba Nchu, Tweespruit, and Dewetsdorp.

The Debate Society is set to host a Global Politics Seminar that will analyse and explain the forces that influence international politics, and South Africa's standpoint in the global perspective. This seminar, taking place in October, will focus on the activities of chief global actors, and some of the core crises that can shape students’ understanding of current foreign affairs. The seminar will comprise presentations from knowledgeable local students and Debate Society alumni, which will conclude with a fiery debate by the society on the dynamic and controversial topic of South Africa's future in the international political arena. 

Access to the seminar is reserved for donors who will pledge their support to the society’s journey to the upcoming World Championships. For more information on how to pledge, visit the World Championships Pledge.

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News Archive

PSP produces first Y1-rating in UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
2015-12-14

Dr Andrew Cohen, a research fellow at the University of the Free State, recently received a distinguished National Research Foundation Y1-rating.
Photo: Sonia Small

The latest success story of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP) is that the first National Research Foundation (NRF) Y1-rating was awarded recently to a scholar while teaching in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Dr Andrew Cohen received this distinguished rating on 10 November 2015. It is awarded to a “young” (younger than 40) scholar five years or less post-PhD, whose curriculum vitae predicts, according to a panel of international and local reviewers, that he is poised to become a leader in his field. Dr Cohen is a research fellow at the UFS.

This rating is a reflection of Dr Cohen’s record over the past eight years, and the scholarly environment he was part of at the UFS under leadership of Prof Ian Phimister. Cohen is currently a research fellow in Prof Phimister’s International Studies Group.  He taught economic history in the Department of Economics until September 2015, when he joined the School of History at the University of Kent.

Dr Cohen’s professional trajectory is emblematic of the visionary approach of the UFS Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP): to support prestige scholars with advanced mentorship, and the creation of a college of peers in order to nurture intellectual breadth and depth to generate knowledge over disciplines.

The PSP was initiated by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS in 2011.

“Jonathan Jansen’s prestige scholars have become sought after in the academic community at large, as this recent appointment at the University of Kent indicates,” says Professor Neil Roos, co-director of the PSP. “Yet the alumni’s commitment to the programme, the university and their peers continues.”

Cohen is the editor (with Casper Andersen) of the five volume, The Government and Administration of Africa, 1880-1939. Dr Cohen’s next project is forthcoming from I.B. Tauris, The Politics and Economics of Decolonisation: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation.

 

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