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07 June 2018 Photo Prof CB Bousman, from Texas State University.
Quaternary International volume dedicated to UFS research fellow
Dr James Brink visits the Erfkroon site on the Modder River in the Free State.
The contents of a special issue of Quaternary International (QI), consisting of 13 articles and contributions by 45 authors (25 from abroad), was recently presented to Dr James Simpson Brink. The papers represent the broad range of topics covered by Dr Brink’s research interests.  

The special issue of QI was initiated to coincide with James Simpson Brink’s 60th birthday after he recently celebrated 35 years of ground-breaking research at the National Museum of Bloemfontein.

Dr Brink is affiliated to the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Prof Louis Scott, researcher in the Department of Plant Sciences at the UFS, was the executive guest editor, and was part of a team of three guest editors (Dr Liora Horwitz from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Dr Daryl Codron from the National Museum in Bloemfontein) who worked on this special issue of the journal, QI. 

In honour of a friend and colleague
“Dr Brink made contributions to osteology, Quaternary palaeontology, and archaeozoology, by investigating the environments and mechanisms that drove the evolution of mammal communities of southern Africa,” said the guest editors. 

“By studying the morphology of the endemic black wildebeest he demonstrated how the species evolved in the central interior of South Africa. He pioneered descriptions and dating of faunal assemblages that make up the so-called ‘Cornelian’ and ‘Florisian’ Land Mammal Ages. In this way he reconstructed the long history of environments in which Stone Age occupants survived in the region. The work included the age determination of the cranium with facial bones of an individual who lived at Floribad around 250 000 years ago.

Work enabled more important studies
“Dr Brink contributed more than purely academic insights in that he built and curated the modern mammal and fossil faunal collections of the Florisbad Quaternary Research Station. These collections made it possible for researchers, who came from all over the world, to visit the Free State and focus on spatial and temporal palaeoenvironmental trends. Apart from contributing to the functional diversity of mammalian species, this enabled the investigation of morphological and behavioural variations across populations and communities,” said the editors.

The topics of the papers in this special issue of QI are interdisciplinary and include different methods in archaeology, vertebrate palaeontology and past (or palaeo-) environmental reconstruction. The ages dealt with range from the relatively recent Iron Age to the Oldowan period, which is over a million years old.

According to Prof Scott, with a degree of overlap in the interdisciplinary fields studied, the papers can be arranged into 1) taphonomy and archaeozoology, relating to the processes resulting in the formation and preservation of fossil material in archaeological sites, 2) Stone Age archaeology, dealing with artefacts, stratigraphy and palaeoanthropology, and 3) palaeoecology, that includes palaeontology, isotope studies and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions.

The journal, published by Elsevier, will be distributed worldwide. 

News Archive

UFS receives research grant focusing on enablement of non-profit organisations
2011-01-20

 
Prof. Mabel Erasmus

The University of the Free State (UFS) has received a research grant to the value of R1,1 million from the National Research Foundation (NRF) to conduct research on community engagement, with the emphasis on knowledge as enablement – a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) focus.

This was the first time the NRF had requested applications for research with a focus on community engagement (CE). With the grant, the UFS has become one of the first recipients of a research grant that focuses on community engagement.

The overarching research question that will be dealt with is how Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and the NPO sector can establish long-term, research-based collaborative engagements that will be mutually empowering and enabling through joint, reciprocal knowledge-based activities and capacity building.

The contention that this proposal is based on, is that HEIs have limited knowledge of the NPO sector and thus are unable to be fully responsive to the challenges that NPOs face. What is more, it is very likely that staff and students from HEIs do not have an adequate grasp of the experiential understanding, contextual community knowledge and practical know-how that NPO practitioners have, and hence do not appreciate the crucial contributions that they can make with regard to meaning-making processes aimed at improving some of the harsh South African realities.

According to Prof. Mabel Erasmus, Associate Professor and Head of the university’s Division: Service Learning, which submitted the research proposal to the NRF and is the grant-holder, the university would like the information generated by the research to be beneficial to both HEIs and the NPOs. “Knowledge regarding NPOs, specifically their challenges and information about what they are doing, will be invaluable to HEIs. At the same time, the research must benefit the NPOs with knowledge to improve their practice and strengthen their functioning.

“The research will take place in close collaboration with the NPOs, as their inputs are crucial. The research will thus not be ‘about’ them but ‘with’ them.”

“We do not want to send our students for community-based education or as volunteers to NPOs year after year and it does not mean as much to them as these organisations would hope for. With the research process we would like to strengthen NPOs, to build their capacity and give them our whole-hearted cooperation,” she said.

Funding received from the grant will be applied over a period of three years. Except for the study grants for five Ph.D. students and four master’s students, the grant will further make provision for a number of workshops, a local conference, a publication and presentations at international conferences on this matter. The research team of 22 persons includes academics from other HEIs such as the Central University of Technology, University of Zululand, University of Johannesburg and Monash SA. Several staff members of NPOs also form part of the team, including REACH (Bfn), Childline (FS) and others.

Prof. Erasmus said that the UFS was one of a few institutions that were currently conducting research to this extent on the link between the NPO sector and HEIs within the field of community engagement.
 

Media Release
18 January 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication (actg)
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

 

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