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28 November 2022 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Anja Aucamp
Prof Melanie Walker
Prof Melanie Walker is one of two NRF A1-rated scholars at the UFS.

The Higher Education and Human Development (HEHD) research group under the leadership of Prof Melanie Walker has grown to become a pocket of academic excellence and innovation at the UFS. “The group’s research positions universities (if ‘reimagined’) as potentially powerful sites for achieving human development by challenging the status quo and entrenched interests and inequalities,” Prof Walker notes. 

HEHD researchers draw substantially on the capability approach, which offers a contribution to higher education in South Africa, primarily because it derives from a normative framework that places human flourishing as its primary goal, chiming with the country’s transformation goals.

Prof Walker is an internationally acclaimed researcher and academic and one of three A-rated National Research Foundation (NRF) scholars at the UFS. In 2021, she was elected as the first president of the international Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) from the Global South. Back then, Prof Walker said the UFS already had a strong research presence within the HDCA, and her group was known for its work in African higher education. The HDCA brings together academics who generate ideas and research on human development.

The research group, which was founded by Prof Walker, is an embodiment of the quality and of the impact elements of the institutional narrative of the UFS. The HEHD is now happily based in the Centre for Development Support within the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences.

Top-tier research outputs from HEHD

The outputs of the HEHD research group have a far-reaching impact, given the nature of its national and international affiliated researchers, students, and collaborators. Members of the group have published 19 peer-reviewed books since 2013, and since 2016, the HEHD has graduated 20 PhDs whose research focuses on diverse aspects of higher education and capabilities across the sub- Saharan region. A range of international examiners in the USA, the UK and Europe attest to the quality of the HEHD’s doctoral graduates.

“I am immensely proud of the quality of the research and collective ethos of our graduate students and our researchers and, as importantly, the substantive focus on human development and social justice in and through higher education in Africa,” Prof Walker says. “As Professor Tristan McCowan and others have noted, this group is quite unique internationally,” she continues.

Projects and research collaborations

The numerous institutional and national and international research collaborations are also testament to the interdisciplinarity of Prof Walker’s academic approach. Various recent and current projects attest to this, for example, the recently completed Miratho project on inclusive higher education learning outcomes for low-income rural youth with Birmingham and Nottingham.

Some of the the book titles that have been published by HEHD members past and present, on display on the wall in the Benito Khotseng Building on the Bloemfontein Campus. (Photo: Anja Aucamp) 


A further current example is the project under the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) with Bristol and Rhodes led by Dr Mikateko Mathebula, and a new edited book underway with Alejandra Boni and Diana Velasco (Spain) on higher education and reparative futures.

 
Furthermore, national collaborations such as the project with colleagues in the Centre for Development Support at the UFS and the University of Pretoria, which will be investigating the sustainable (ecologically and socially), developmental South African university and justice facing university futures from a variety of stakeholder 
perspectives.

This research project is informed by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, because achieving them cannot be done without the contributions of higher education institutions.

It is thus evident that under the leadership of Prof Walker, the HEHD research group is now established as one of the finest research groups at the UFS and contributes actively to the research and academic excellence at the university.

News Archive

New security measures for Rag fundraising
2012-01-25

The University of the Free State will no longer allow first-year students to sell Ritsems or to shake their cans for change at traffic robots in Bloemfontein in an effort to raise funds for Rag Community Service.

This decision follows after an evaluation has been done in 2011 and 2012 concerning the safety risk for students during this type of sales at road crossings.
 
The new security measures have specifically been implemented for this type of sales since last year.
 
The measures included, among others, that students should be obliged to wear brightly coloured safety jackets during sales, continuous supervision of first-year students by senior students to ensure that students keep to the rules of the road, and limiting the sales hours at robots.
 
Through notices in the media, an appeal was made on motorists to keep a lookout for students raising money for Rag Community Service. The measures were implemented and the effects thereof for students’ safety during sales at robots monitored since last year. This follows after a student, Ms Hanje Pistorius, was hit by a reckless driver in 2010 and she subsequently lost her leg as a result of the accident. 
 
Although, from all appearances, the new measures are a positive contribution to protect students even more, the UFS decided to abolish the sales and fund-raising actions at traffic robots. As reckless drivers would not necessarily take notice of the extra measures, the risk to students at robots stay unchanged. 
 
"The UFS sets the safety of its students as first priority and considers it in the best interest of students to not expose first-years to the risk during our Rag programme,” says Mr Rudi Buys, Dean: Student Affairs at the UFS.
 
Night fund-raising and the selling of Ritsem in the city’s suburbs will, however, continue. 
 
Although the UFS do not expect the new measures to be detrimental to fund-raising efforts, Rag Community Service currently considers new supporting proposals for the raising of funds for community projects in order to address any possible reduction in funds. 
 
Mr Buys also has an agreement with Ms Pistorius to assist Rag Community Services in the planning of new projects.
 
The Night fund-raising in suburbs will take place on Tuesday 24 January and Thursday 26 January and the UFS calls on residents to assist students and help them in the important task at hand.
 
Three Rag processions will take place on Saturday 28 January 2012. At 10:00 two Rag procession will be leave for Heidedal and Mangaung, where the Kovsie Rag Community Service will hand out food parcels.
 
The main Rag Procession will leave the UFS at 18:00 and will move towards the Old Greys sports ground for the Rag concert with Die Heuwels Fantasties and DJ Black Coffee.

Media Release
25 January 2012
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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