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New research forum to serve as interdisciplinary umbrella network

08 August 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Rulanzen Martin

Indexicality Research Group — The speakers and members of the forum at the colloquium from left; Thys Heidenrich (Drama and Theatre Arts); Dr Martin Rossouw (Art History and Image Studies); Xany Jansen van Vuuren (Linguistics and Language Practice); Kavish Jawahar (Rhodes University); Nessrin Khalil; Prof Kobus Marais (Linguistics and Language Studies); Danilda Els (Centre for Teaching and Learning) and Leon Snyman (Odeion School of Music)

A new research forum launched at the University of the Free State (UFS) hopes to shed new light on social-cultural reality. The socio-cultural tradition looks at the ways we interactively work out understandings, meanings, norms and rules in communication.
The new interdepartmental group called the Indexicality Research Forum (IRF) is the brainchild of Prof Kobus Marais from the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice at UFS.

“The forum should be some kind of umbrella network, rather than a fixed group, studying various aspects of the emergence of social-cultural reality,” says Prof Marais. The forum was officially launched on Friday 19 July 2019 at a research colloquium attended by members from various UFS academic departments as well as Kavish Jawahar from Rhodes University.

For Prof Marais the forum will be “studying various aspects of the emergence of social-cultural reality by using the notion of indexicality as conceptualised by Charles Peirce”.
Peirce was a US scientist and philosopher best known as the earliest proponent of pragmatism.

It is structured around these Five research questions.

The forum consists of the following departments in the faculty; Linguistics and Language Practice, Drama and Theatre Arts, Art History and Image Studies, and the Odeion School of Music, as well Curriculum Studies at Rhodes University. “Internationally, the scholars from the Department of Arts and Design from the Federal University of Juis de Fora in Brazil will also take part in the forum.”

The research forum is not solely for Humanities students but scholars of development studies, cultural studies, mathematics, biology and medicine would also benefit.

News Archive

UFS presents unique rally

2005-06-07

On Friday 10 June 2005, the University of the Free State (UFS) will present the Kovsie version of the Amazing Race in Bloemfontein.

The Amazing Rainbow Rally will be held in aid of children and babies with serious diseases in the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

By raising the necessary funds, equipment can be acquired to meet the unique health care needs of these special patients. It will also enable the UFS to maintain the high standards of education, training and research in this field.

The Amazing Rainbow Rally will give some residents of Bloemfontein an opportunity to test their knowledge of the city, as well as their time management skills, communication skills, team work and even their relationships!

About 12 corporate teams from among others Vodacom, Eskom, Medi-Clinic, Mimosa Mall and Nedbank and four university teams must follow a specific route with various checkpoints by car. Here they will have to complete activities or solve clues before receiving their clue to the next checkpoint. Teams will be traveling with cars branded with the logo of the company they represent.

The rally will start at 09:00 at the Rooiplein of the UFS and will again end on the campus where they will complete the last task. The first team to complete this task is the winner of Bloemfontein’s first Amazing Rainbow Rally.

OFM’s breakfast team will do live crossings on the day to reveal how teams are doing.

The Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the UFS serves children with special needs, in other words children who need intensive care, or who suffer from cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and conditions, endocrinological diseases or gastro-enterological conditions.

The Department provides secondary health care to more than 250 000 children in the southern parts of the Free State, but is responsible for the tertiary care of about a million children in the Free State and Northern Cape, as well as some parts of the North-West province, the Eastern Cape and Lesotho. The intensive care units at Universitas and Pelonomi Hospitals serve approximately 1 300 neonatal and 350 intensive care patients annually. The pediatric cardiology unit admits almost 300 high care heart patients per year. Approximately 13 000 out-patients visit these two hospitals every year.

MEDIA RELEASE

Issued by:  Lacea Loader
   Media Representative
   Tel: (051) 401-2584
   Cell: 083 645 2454
   E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za

7 June 2005

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