Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Building a research career with global impact

13 July 2023 | Story Andre Damons | Photo Samkelo Fetile

A visiting scholar from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland visited the University of the Free State (UFS) to work with staff members from the UFS Transformation of the Professoriate Mentoring Programme on identifying collaborations, writing, and building a research career.

Prof Catherine Comiskey, a professor in Healthcare Statistics from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin and Academic Director of CHARM-EU – an EU-funded academic programme – held a writing retreat for participants in the Transformation of the Professoriate Mentoring Programme in the last week of June. She also worked with individual members to identify potential European and UK collaborators on various research projects. On Friday 30 June, she presented a lecture on building a research career with global impact.

Encouraging staff members

According to Dr Henriëtte van den Berg, Manager: Transformation of the Professoriate Mentoring Programme, Prof Comiskey encouraged colleagues to develop a research and publication strategy to ensure that they optimise the work they are doing, to look for opportunities to collaborate with colleagues across different disciplines, and to work together on publications and the supervision of postgraduate students.

“She also emphasised the importance of collaborating with people in industry, as they often have a rich source of data that is publishable. She highlighted the importance of being an ethical researcher. The workshop participants benefited from her passion and broad knowledge to start planning collaborations and to reflect on how they can make the work they are already doing work more for them. A group of workshop participants has already started working on a systematic review that they will conduct in collaboration with Prof Comiskey,” said Dr Van den Berg.

Share expertise

Prof Comiskey facilitated online writing interventions for the colleagues of the mentoring programme during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. She was invited to the campus to share her expertise in quantitative methodology and transdisciplinary work.

Prof Comiskey completed a PhD in Mathematics and coordinates many interdisciplinary research teams, comprising applied mathematicians, statisticians, psychologists, medical doctors, sociologists, anthropologists, nurses, computer scientists, and healthcare employees. She has been selected as one of five international experts nominated by the European Commission to serve on the International Scientific Committee of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

She has 30 years’ experience of teaching, research, postgraduate supervision, and teaching to specialists and non-specialists in all areas of applied statistics, mathematics, and epidemiology. She is also a seasoned academic leader, having served as Research Director at Trinity College, Dublin for many years.

CHARM-EU is an EU-funded academic programme spanning five European universities to develop, run, and evaluate a new EU-wide model for Universities of the Future. This involves a new transdisciplinary master’s degree that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

News Archive

UFS to honour past and present Cabinet ministers

2010-04-19

The University of the Free State (UFS) is going to confer honorary doctoral degrees on former Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Dr Ben Ngubane, and the current Minister of Finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, during the university’s autumn graduation ceremony next month.

They will receive their honorary doctorates on 18 and 19 May respectively.

“It is an honour for the UFS to confer these honorary doctorates on people like these who have made, and continue to make outstanding contributions towards the wellbeing of this beautiful country. Being associated with people of this stature signifies the direction that the UFS is taking in our quest to be a great university, one of the best in the world,” said Prof. Jonathan Jansen, the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

Dr Ngubane will be honoured for his immense contribution towards positioning South Africa as a major and an influential player in the development of arts, culture, science and technology internationally.

He was the first Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in the new, democratic South Africa appointed by the former President, Nelson Mandela, in 1994. He was re-appointed to lead this ministry again by former President Thabo Mbeki in 1999.

As Premier of KwaZulu-Natal from 1996 to 1999, Dr Ngubane is credited for his role in bringing about peace and reducing the political violence that ravaged the province at that time.

In 2004 he was appointed as Ambassador to Japan where he initiated, among other projects, the South Africa-Japan University Forum (SAJU).
He has been honoured for outstanding contributions to higher education and community development and holds Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Natal, Zululand, the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa) and the Tshwane University of Technology.

He is currently the Chairperson of the SABC Board.

Minister Gordhan, on the other hand, formed an integral part of the constitutional transition of South Africa between 1991 and 1994. He chaired the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) Management Committee – the midwife and negotiating forum for a free South Africa. He was also co-chair of the Transitional Executive Council, which was a governance structure tasked with ensuring South Africa’s transition process prior to the historic 1994 elections.

In 1994, with the dawn of a new democracy in South Africa, Mr Gordhan became a Member of Parliament and was elected as Chairperson of the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee, which oversaw the implementation of the new constitutional order. At the same time he played a leading role in drafting the present constitution of the democratic South Africa. He also led the process of formulating a new policy framework for local government transformation.

Mr Gordhan was appointed as Deputy Commissioner at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) in March 1998 after being deployed from Parliament as part of the government’s drive to transform the public service. The following year he was appointed as Commissioner for SARS with the important task, amongst others, to transform South Africa’s Customs and Revenue administration – a strategic governmental institution.

He has represented South Africa in many international undertakings, including several peacekeeping missions, as Chairperson of the Customs Workshop for the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safe-Guarding Integrity (2001), and is often called upon to make presentations at tax seminars and customs conferences.

In 2000 he was appointed Chairperson of the Council of World Customs Organisation (WCO), based in Brussels, a position to which he was re-elected twice, thus serving from 2000 to 2006.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
19 April 2010

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept