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31 July 2020
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Story Lacea Loader
As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the 3rd UFS Thought-Leader Series in collaboration with Vrye Weekblad as part of the Vrystaat Literature Festival’s online initiative, VrySpraak-digitaal.
This year, higher-education institutions
globally are placed in the challenging context of COVID-19. Aware and grounded in the reality that the world will not return to the normality of pre-COVID-19, our responsibility as scholars still remains to contribute to public discourse and to offer
innovative solutions that will impact the lives of people nationally and globally in order to help them understand and adapt to a new world order.
Against this background and context, this year’s debates focus on ‘Post-COVID-19, Post-Crisis’,
with Health and Modelling, Politics, Economy, and Predictions for 2021 as the sub-themes. Placed in a COVID-19 context, and in lieu of the Vrystaat Arts Festival,
the series will be presented virtually in the form of one webinar per month during the period August 2020 to November 2020.
Date: 13 August 2020
Topic: Health
and Modelling
Time: 11:30-13:00
RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za
Facilitator:
Max du Preez
Editor: Vrye Weekblad
Biography
Introduction and welcome:
Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS
Panellists:
Prof Salim Abdool Karim
Director: Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
Chair: South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19
Biography
Prof Glenda Gray
President and CEO: South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)
Biography
Prof Felicity Burt
NRF-DST South African Research Chair in vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens research
Biography
Senior professor launches new book in London
2013-05-13
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Alejandra Boni (left) is an associate professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain and Melanie Walker is a Senior Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Higher Education and Capabilities Research (CHECaR) at UFS.
13 May 2013 |
Melanie Walker and Alejandra Boni (Eds.) were hosted by the Institute of Education at the University of London, in April to launch the publication of their new book, titled: Human Development and Capabilities: Re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century (Routlege).
In the face of reductionist and “thin” human capital approaches to higher education globally, the book imaginatively applies a theoretical framework to universities as institutions and social practices from human development and the capability approach. The book attempts to show how universities might advance equalities rather than necessarily widen them, and how they can contribute to a sustainable and democratic society.
Picking through the capability approach for human development, in relation to universities, this book highlights and explores three main ideas:
- theoretical insights to advance thinking about human development and higher education
- policy implications for the responsibilities and potential contributions of universities in a period of significant global change and
- operationalising a New Imaginary
The book is available for purchase online and will be added to the library collection soon.