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20 April 2021 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo istock
The Faculty of the Humanities webinar series will provide opportunities for future research collaboration.

How does an anthropologist, a linguist, and a health systems researcher collect data during COVID-19 when human interaction is limited? Speaking at the first webinar hosted by the Faculty of the Humanities on Fieldwork in the time of COVID-19, Prof Deborah Posel, Research Professor in Sociology, said, “Lockdown impacted social sciences just as much. For us it was a lockout from people, libraries, and field research.” 

“The benefits (of the webinar) for Humanities research are obvious. Research in the Humanities differs a lot from research in other disciplines such as Natural Sciences; it happens in silos and not as a group focused,” said Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities. This webinar series will provide a platform to engage, but also for inter-departmental and inter-disciplinary research in the faculty. “Using this platform to engage and talk about our shared experiences will help bring researchers together and to reflect on our own experiences,” Prof Hudson said. 

Academics from different departments in the faculty shared how the COVID-19 lockdown affected their research projects. They were Dr Gladys Kigozi, Senior Researcher in the Centre for Health Systems Research and Development (CHSR&D), Dr Kristina Riedel from the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice, and Prof Joy Owen from the Department of Anthropology

Different approaches implemented 

Centre for Health Systems Research and Development
Research in the CHSR&D focuses mainly on in-person research. “COVID-19 has diminished the interaction between researchers and participants, and it threatened the quality of data gathering,” Dr Kigozi said. Field activities were thus suspended for six months, which compromised the timeline of projects.  

The CHSR&D aligned their projects with COVID-19 regulations and had virtual consolidations with the Free State Department of Health, while advertising research through health-care workers and social media.

Listen to a recording of the webinar here: 


Faculty of the Humanities webinar on Fieldwork in the time of COVID-19


Department of Linguistics and Language Practice 
For Dr Kristina Riedel, COVID-19 was not the proverbial nail in the coffin of linguistics research. There is great body of spoken, signed or written language that has been transcribed. “Linguists may also study public or private online data or printed texts such as newspapers, social media, and Bible translations,” Dr Riedel said. 

Language documentation usually happens with a researcher interacting with a speaker or group of speakers, which is then recorded in a high-quality, low-noise environment. Just like Anthropology, the best form of understanding data comes from in-person documentation. “We often need to work with people who are not connected to online spaces, such as the elderly and marginalised communities,” Dr Riedel said. Researchers sometimes need to be immersed in the community when recording takes place.

Department of Anthropology 
Prof Joy Owen provided perspective on how Anthropology as a discipline and anthropologists have been impacted by the lack of human interaction, which is what Anthropology is essentially about. “Anthropology, as founded in the early 20th century, is a fully immersive experience. Body, mind, psyche, and spirt were employed to understand the other (people),” Prof Owen said in her opening remarks. The anthropological encounter could thus not be socially and physically distant. 

The continuous shift to virtual interaction is not an ideal practice. “A video call, however initiated, cannot provide access to the daily nuances of life,” Prof Owen said. The video call/interview cannot replace the in-person ‘hanging out.'


News Archive

Research contributes to improving quality of life for cancer patients
2016-11-21

Description: Inorganic Chemistry supervisors  Tags: Inorganic Chemistry supervisors

Inorganic Chemistry supervisors in the Radiopharmacy
Laboratory during the preparation of a typical complex
mixture to see how fast it reacts. Here are, from the left,
front: Dr Marietjie Schutte-Smith, Dr Alice Brink
(both scholars from the UFS Prestige
Scholar Programme), and Dr Truidie Venter (all three
are Thuthuka-funded researchers).
Back: Prof André Roodt and Dr Johan Venter.
Photo: Supplied

Imagine that you have been diagnosed with bone cancer and only have six months to live. You are in a wheelchair because the pain in your legs is so immense that you can’t walk anymore – similar to a mechanism eating your bones from the inside.

You are lucky though, since you could be injected with a drug to control the pain so effective that you will be able to get out of the wheelchair within a day-and-a-half and be able to walk again. Real-life incidents like these provide intense job satisfaction to Prof André Roodt, Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of the Free State (UFS). The research, which is conducted by the Inorganic Group at the UFS, contributes greatly to the availability of pain therapy that does not involve drugs, but improves the quality of life for cancer patients.

The research conducted by the Inorganic Group under the leadership of Prof Roodt, plays a major role in the clever design of model medicines to better detect and treat cancer.

The Department of Chemistry is one of approximately 10 institutions worldwide that conducts research on chemical mechanisms to identify and control cancer. “The fact that we are able to cooperate with the Departments of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Physics at the UFS, the Animal Research Centre, and other collaborators in South Africa and abroad, but especially the methodology we utilise to conduct research (studying the chemical manner in which drugs are absorbed in cancer as well as the time involved), enhances the possibility of making a contribution to cancer research,” says Prof Roodt.

Technique to detect cancer spots on bone
According to the professor, there are various ways of detecting cancer in the body. Cancer can, inter alia, be identified by analysing blood, X-rays (external) or through an internal technique where the patient is injected with a radioactive isotope.

Prof Roodt explains: “The doctor suspects that the patient has bone cancer and injects the person with a drug consisting of an isotope (only emits X-rays and does no damage to tissue) that is connected to a phosphonate (similar to those used for osteoporosis). Once the drug is injected, the isotope (Technetium-99m) moves to the spot on the bone where the cancer is located. The gamma rays in the isotope illuminate the area and the doctor can see exactly where treatment should be applied. The Technetium-99m has the same intensity gamma rays as normal X-rays and therefore operates the same as an internal X-ray supply.” With this technique, the doctor can see where the cancer spots are within a few hours.

The same technique can be used to identify inactive parts of the brain in Alzheimer patients, as well as areas of the heart where there is no blood supply or where the heart muscle is dead.

Therapeutic irradiation of cancer
For the treatment of pain connected with cancer, the isotope Rhenium-186 is injected. Similar to the manner in which the Technetium-99m phosphonate compound is ingested into the body, the Rhenium-186 phosphonate travels to the cancer spots. Patients thus receive therapeutic irradiation – a technique known as palliative therapy, which is excellent for treating pain. A dosage of this therapy usually lasts for about two months.

The therapy is, however, patient specific. The dosages should correspond with the occurrence and size of cancer spots in the patient’s body. First, the location of the cancer will be determined by means of a technetium scan. After that, the size of the area where the cancer occurs has to be determined. The dosage for addressing total pain distribution will be calculated according to these results.

Technique to detect cancer spots on soft tissue
Another technique to detect cancer as spots on bone or in soft tissue and organs throughout the body is by utilising a different type of irradiation, a so-called PET isotope. The Fluor-18 isotope is currently used widely, and in Pretoria a machine called a cyclotron was produced by Dr Gerdus Kemp, who is a former PhD graduate from the Inorganic Research Group. The F-18 is then hidden within a glucose molecule and a patient will be injected with the drug after being tranquillised and after the metabolism has been lowered considerably. The glucose, which is the ‘food' that cancer needs to grow, will then travel directly to the cancer area and the specific area where the cancer is located will thus be traced and ‘illuminated’ by the Fluor-18, which emits its own 'X-rays'.

In the late 80s, Prof Roodt did his own postdoctoral study on this research in the US. He started collaborating with the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the UFS in the early 90s, when he initiated testing for this research.

Through their research of more than 15 years, the Inorganic Group in the Department of Chemistry has made a major contribution to cancer research. Research on mechanisms for the detection of cancer, by designing new clever chemical agents, and the chemical ways in which these agents are taken up in the body, especially contributes to the development in terms of cancer therapy and imaging, and has been used by a number of hospitals in South Africa.

The future holds great promise
Prof Roodt and his team are already working on a bilateral study between the UFS and Kenya. It involves the linking of radio isotopes, as mentioned above, to known natural products (such as rooibos tea), which possess anti-cancer qualities.

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