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UFS Reflection Series webinar: The quality of our democracies under COVID-19

04 August 2020 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

Apart from its devastating impact on people’s lives and livelihoods, the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the nature and quality of our democracies – democracy read in its widest sense here as collective and individual self-determination. Formal, institutional democracy has beencurtailed through the imposition of states of emergency or disaster and the logistical difficulties associated with social distancing. Extra-institutional democratic work, such as protest and social-movement activity, has suffered from prohibitions imposed by law and through state suppression related to ‘lockdown’. The nature (and perhaps democratic quality) of public conversation has changed – for better or worse – from increasing reliance on ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ to justify public choices. The crisis has brought to the fore already existing characteristics of our democracies, such as the prevalence and power of special-interest bargaining, the extreme inequality of our societies, and chauvinist nationalisms that force us to ask whether we have ever had democracy at all. What will be the long-term effects of these impacts of the crisis on our democracies? What will democracy look like post-COVID? What does the crisis teach us about what our democracies have always been?

Join us for a discussion of these and other democracy-related issues in these troubled times by a panel of four hailing from Colombia, India, South Africa, and the USA.

Date: Thursday, 13 August

Time: 14:00-16:00 (South African Standard Time – GMT +2)

Please RSVP to Mamello Serasengwe at serasengwemsm@ufs.ac.za no later than 12 August 2020 upon which you will receive a Skype for Business meeting invite and link to access the webinar

Panel

Prof Natalia Angel Cabo (University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia)

Dr Quaraysha Ismail-Sooliman (University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa)

Dr Usha Ramanathan Independent Law Researcher (Delhi, India)

Prof Katie Young (Boston College, Boston, USA)

Moderator

Prof Danie Brand (Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)

News Archive

Partnership between UFS and Farmovs-Parexel strengthened

2004-12-09

The synthesizing of drug molecules to be used as reference standards during the quantitative analysis of drugs and metabolites in biological fluids, will from now on be done by the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of Chemistry.

This agreement was recently signed by the UFS’s Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and FARMOVS-PAREXEL.

To expand the collaboration between the two units further, FARMOVS-PAREXEL has donated instrumentation to the value of about R 2 million to the Department of Chemistry. These include a tandem liquid chromatograph/mass spectrometer and several other chromatographic systems.

The instruments will be used for research on both the synthesis of reference standards and bio-prospecting. They will play a major role in the training of students in the techniques of advanced mass spectrometry and chromatography at the UFS and will lead to publications in international scientific journals.

For a number of years FARMOVS-PAREXEL has presented Masters and PhD degrees in Bio-Analytical Chemistry. A new collaboration has now been reached where joint projects will be used for Masters and PhD degrees by the two institutions.

Two FARMOVS-PAREXEL staff members have enrolled for Ph D-degrees in the organic section of the UFS’s Department of Chemistry. Senior staff members of the two institutions will act as joint supervisors.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
9 December 2004

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