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08 October 2018 | Story UFS | Photo Stephen Collett
Researching inequalities and higher education
At the International Colloquium on Researching well-being, agency and structural inequalities, were from the left: Prof Melanie Walker, Dr Emily Henderson (Warwick University, UK), and Prof Thierry Luescher (Human Sciences Research Council).

Researchers from the University of the Free State (UFS), University of Minnesota, Lancaster University, University College London, and University of the Western Cape came together at the Bloemfontein Campus for a dynamic and exciting International Colloquium on Researching well-being, agency and structural inequalities: comparative perspectives. 

Prof Melanie Walker’s South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) in Higher Education and Human Development group has invited experienced and early-career scholars to deliberate on matters ranging from marginalisation, decolonisation, inclusion, enhancing capabilities, negative capability, power, and agency in education. Across the papers, education was understood as having the potential to redress inequality, but at the same time it also reproduces such inequalities.
 
Freedoms in higher education

Following the colloquium which took place on 19 September 2018, the SARChI Chair celebrated the launch of Dr Talita Calitz’s book. Dr Calitz is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Education Management and Policy Studies at the University of Pretoria; she completed her doctoral research and a postdoctoral research fellowship under the UFS SARChI Chair. Her book, titled Enhancing the Freedom to Flourish in Higher Education: Participation, equality and capabilities, explores the insight that student narratives can offer to debates about the complex reasons why some students flourish at university while others are socially and academically marginalised.

News Archive

Placing of new first-year students in residences to change
2009-09-12

As of 2010, new first-year students who study at the University of the Free State (UFS) will be fully integrated in the residences. This will be done as part of the university’s objective to increase diversity in its residences.

Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor, made this proposal to the UFS Council yesterday during its quarterly meeting as an alternative to his idea of having exclusively first-year residences as of next year. The proposal was unanimously supported by the Council.

“I have discussed my idea of having first-year residences widely with many stakeholders and, based on the feedback I received, decided not to go ahead, but to make a proposal to Council that first-year students be placed in residences with a 50/50 racial balance in which no student grouping dominates. It is a proposal that most role players are comfortable with and which will cause the least disruption to our senior students,” said Prof. Jansen.

“We must create a new culture in our residences. Our residences must be places where academic work enjoys priority in the organisation and culture of the residences. The university has many goals, one of which is that students learn to live and learn together so that they are better equipped to face the challenges of the modern workplace,” he said.

From next year, new first-year students will be placed centrally in residences by the university management, with some participation of senior students.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Deputy Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za  
12 September 2009

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