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12 September 2018

What can or should higher education contribute to transformation and development by advancing the human well-being and agency of all students? How would our universities need to change to truly foster human development? 

These are the common questions cutting across the papers which will be presented at the International colloquium on ‘Researching well-being, agency and structural inequalities: comparative perspectives’. The University of the Free State’s (UFS) South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in higher education and human development research programme led by Prof Melanie Walker will host the colloquium on 19 September 2018 at the Bloemfontein Campus.

The colloquium presents critical scholarship on development and also serves to celebrate the second five-year term of the SARChI Chair. The event has been structured to enable opportunities for early career researchers from the UFS to present their work alongside that of experienced scholars from the UK, US and South Africa, working on human development, development ethics and on education.
 
Date: Wednesday 19 September 2018
Time: 09:00-17:00
Venue: Chancellor’s Room, Centenary Complex, Bloemfontein Campus

Enquiries: Contact Elize Rall at rall.elize@gmail.com or on 076 792 9999 and CC Lucretia Smith at SmithL3@ufs.ac.za or dial 051 401 9856.

Click on the attached documents for the invitation and programme

News Archive

UFS law researcher part of international project to produce human trafficking reference book
2017-03-17

Description: Human trafficking reference book Tags: Human trafficking reference book


Trafficking in Persons has been in the spotlight as an ever-growing crime around the world. Research being done in South Africa by various universities over the years has yielded results that are internationally recognised.

Part of this work has been done by Prof Beatri Kruger, Research Associate at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of the Free State (UFS), who has been involved in research that has created awareness around the world on various methods of human trafficking in Africa. She is currently working on co-authoring a chapter in the International Handbook on Human Trafficking to be published by Palgrave, the first of its kind and a major reference work in this field, with Marcel van der Watt, a lecturer at the University of South Africa (Unisa) Department of Police Practice. The reference book is a massive international project that will have more than 60 international contributors and will be published in 2018.

Contribution to international research
The chapter is titled: Breaking bondages: Methods to control victims, ‘Juju’ and human trafficking. It explores the methods used by Nigerian and other West African traffickers, namely “juju” rituals, to subdue their victims for sexual exploitation in various parts of the world. The chapter further charts various physical, financial and the psychological control mechanisms, essential in establishing an informed counter-trafficking global response.

The book and other research being done is a step in the right direction in further understanding specific practices, and can be used to augment international research, support the work of NGOs, law enforcement agencies and individuals who work with victims worldwide, to be able to understand the tools used by perpetrators, and to stop the crime from growing.

Prof Kruger said there were new opportunities at the research division of the UFS Centre for Human Rights to explore human rights violations that occur in human-trafficking scenarios, thus contributing towards more efficient strategies to combat this crime.

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