Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Categories
UFS News Media Release Research
Years
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Months
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Previous Archive
20 March 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnuwka | Photo Charl Devenish
Stagedoor Finals
Houses Vergeet-My-Nie and NJ van der Merwe won over the judges at the 2019 Stagedoor finals.

‘Vergeet van der Merwe’, a hybrid of female residences Vergeet-my-Nie and NJ van der Merwe, are the 2019 Stagedoor competition’s overall winners. The dynamic girl duo showed up and showed off during the 2019 Stagedoor finals in the Kopanong Auditorium on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus over the weekend.

The girls enthused the audience with a soul-filled sing-off and a relatable theatrical performance, which earned them both the audience’s and the judge’s best votes. Teams Welwitschia and Imperium (Welperium), and Outeniqua and Soetdoring (Outdoring), walked away with the second and third positions respectively, as each of the residences were recognised for team excellence and spirit when it came to creativity and overall acting in each of their performances.

The UFS Stagedoor competition is an annual event that employs first-years to take cognisance of the day-to-day societal issues and pressures that university students are faced with. In 2019, the event was for the first time entirely organised and ran by students for students.

The competition has over the years become a major highlight on UFS students’ arts and culture calendar and continues to be a platform of expression for residence and off-campus first-year students. Stagedoor performances are traditionally themed to tackle modern-day issues such as infrastructure and economic inequality, land reform, and education. However, this year’s competition engaged students in telling their stories without any restrictions, and still being able to effectively examine the pressures that come with varsity life, and many other issues that face South Africa, but more specifically the youth. The 2019 Stagedoor event was successfully coordinated and structured by UFS Bloemfontein Campus SRC: Arts and Culture, Patrick Chirilele, with help from Residence Committee (RC) Culture members.

News Archive

Prestige Scholar hosts Prof John Helliwell of Manchester University
2015-12-08

From left is Prof John R. Helliwell (School of Chemistry, University of Manchester), Dr Madeleine Helliwell (School of Chemistry, University of Manchester), Prof Andre Roodt (Department of Chemistry, University of the Free State) and Dr Alice Brink (Department of Chemistry, University of the Free State).
Photo: Steven Collett

At the invitation of Dr Alice Brink of the Department of Chemistry, Prof John Helliwell, the 2015 Max Perutz Prize winner, and his wife, Dr Madeleine Helliwell, visited the University of the Free State (UFS).
The Helliwells, both chemists of note, took part in a series of lectures and exchanges on the Bloemfontein and Qwaqwa Campuses.
This visit from 9-19 November 2015 was the consequence of Dr Brink’s participation in the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP) initiative to encourage the broadening of the international footprint of the next generation of scholars in the academy.

Two year collaboration

Dr Brink and Prof Helliwell from Manchester University have a standing collaboration going back two years. Dr Brink, an NRF Thuthuka grant holder and a member of the PSP since 2013, has spent almost eight months in Manchester, collaborating with Prof Helliwell on her study of the successful interaction of rhenium tricarbonyl complexes with proteins determined via protein crystallography.
Their collaboration resulted from the close association of Prof Helliwell and Prof Andre Roodt from the UFS Department of Chemistry, both former presidents of the European Crystallographic Association.

Sharing academic expertise

Prof Helliwell, the 2014 American Crystallographic Association Patterson Award winner for his “pioneering contributions to the global development of the instrumentation, methods and applications of synchrotron radiation in macromolecular crystallography”, gave three lectures in the Department of Chemistry, two on the Boemfontein Campus, and the other on the Qwaqwa Campus on 13 November 2015.

Dr Helliwell, former co-editor of the Acta Crystallographica Section C: Crystal Structure Communications journal, consulted with postgraduate students from the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept