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Emerging Adults in Search of Self

26 September 2022 | Story Michelle Nöthling | Photo Stephen Collett

Prof Luzelle Naude — Prof Luzelle Naudé, Professor in the Department of Psychology, delivered her inaugural lecture on the topic: In Search of Self: Emerging Adults as Actors, Agents and Authors.

How do people endeavour to answer the question: Who am I? This is the central question that Prof Luzelle Naudé – professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Free State (UFS), has built her academic career on. Under the title of her inaugural lecture, In Search of Self: Emerging Adults as Actors, Agents and Authors, delivered on14 September 2022, Prof Naudé traced the arc of her academic career over the past three decades.

Development as a Scholar

Prof Naudé started by giving an overview of her research as an early scholar, investigating students’ learning experiences and predictors of student success, followed by an exploration of the adolescence stage within the context of South Africa. Prof Naudé’s research interest then led her to investigating the third decade of life: emerging adulthood.

Interestingly, from the turn of the century, the group of 18- to 25-year-olds take longer to transition into adulthood. This group finds themselves in an in-between space, “not being an adolescent anymore, but definitely not being an adult either,” Prof Naudé explained. This has sparked an interesting scholarly debate: is emerging adulthood indeed a new developmental stage, or is it something only applicable to a minority of Western, affluent middle-class, university students? The answer is the former. There are actually many emerging adulthoods – also among our South African youth.

Current Research Focus

Currently, Prof Naudé is interested in the narratives of emerging adults at the intersection of self and society. The self, she pointed out, unfolds through different layers, namely the actor, the agent, and the author. “Our South African emerging adults are acting in an increasingly complex and transitioning social world. As agents, they advance through this complexity by telling redemptive stories of generativity, upward mobility, and of liberation. And as authors, they reconstruct their past, present, and future into a coherent life story and a narrative identity,” Prof Naudé said.

Naude Inaugural From the left; Dr Edwin du Plessis, Head of Department of Psychology; Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of The Humanities; Prof Luzelle Naudé , and Prof Corli Witthuhn, Vice-Rector: Research and Internationalisation. Photo: Stephen Collett.

The Way Forward

“I’ve became convinced,” Prof Naudé emphasised, “about South Africa and the Global South’s ability to contribute to global knowledge production.” Prof Naudé and her team are therefore adding a South African voice to several multicultural, multinational projects, including the African Long-Life Study – in collaboration with the University of Zurich – and the Selves within Selves project. Prof Naudé’s vision, however, is to ultimately establish an Identity Research Hub at the UFS to consolidate research activities in this field and to formalise interdisciplinary partnerships.

Watch recording video below:

News Archive

UFS hosts first SA Digital Sky Academy at the Naval Hill Planetarium

2015-10-02

From the left are: Prof Neil Heideman
(Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, UFS),
Jack White (Director: Sky-Skan Oceania),
Dr Michelle Cluver (Department of Astronomy, University of the Western Cape),
Martin Ratcliffe (Director: Professional Development, Sky-Skan).
Photo: Mart-Mari Duvenhage

South Africa hosts some of the world’s largest telescopes, and won the bid to co-host the SKA recently. So it’s not surprising that there is unprecedented interest in Astronomy in our country. Astronomy is seen as a gateway subject that attracts people to the sciences, while planetariums help to make Astronomy accessible to millions of people. Digital planetariums are especially powerful teaching tools because they are versatile, offer an immersive experience, and explain and illustrate three-dimensional concepts effectively. On the other hand, scientists, are eager to exploit a digital planetarium’s potential to represent and explore data visually, whether the data relate to medicine, astronomy, chemistry, the environment, or other fields of research.

The four-day ‘Digital Sky Academy’ (DSA) presented at the Naval Hill Planetarium in Bloemfontein from 18 - 22 September 2015 was an opportunity to offer training and first-hand experience of digital planetarium technology to representatives from other centres in South Africa. The Department of Physics at the University of the Free State (UFS) was the host of this event.

The Department of Science and Technology has designated the Naval Hill Planetarium as the South African hub for the training of digital planetarium presenters and operators. In addition to attracting interest from scientists and future planetarium operators and presenters, the DSA workshop provided an invaluable opportunity for our presenters to hone their skills.

A number of experienced and distinguished people attended the workshop. Among them was Dr Mark SubbaRao from Chicago in the United States, who shared information on data visualisation techniques used in the Adler Planetarium. Jack White, Director of Sky-Skan, one of the few companies that provide digital technology for planetariums throughout the world, coordinated the event in partnership with Prof Matie Hoffman from the Department of Physics at the UFS.

Jack travelled from Melbourne in Australia to oversee the workshop. Two Sky-Skan colleagues from the United States, Martin Weiss and Martin Ratcliffe, were on hand to share their expertise on digital planetarium hardware and software. The workshop programme included Skype conference calls with other US-based planetarium experts. Amongst the delegates to the DSA representatives from the SKA, the Iziko Museum, and five South Africa universities. They were here to gain experience, explore the capacity of the digital facility, and share ideas on future collaboration.

During the workshop, a public lecture was held on 19 September. Dr Michelle Cluver from the University of the Western Cape gave a presentation entitled, ‘More than the eye can see: the significance of infrared light in Astronomy.’

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