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08 February 2024 | Story Lunga Luthuli | Photo SUPPLIED
Student Campus Tour
The UFS Division of Student Affairs is helping first-time students get their bearings by offering campus tours on the Bloemfontein, South, and Qwaqwa campuses.

The University of the Free State’s (UFS’s) Division of Student Affairs is ready to welcome 2024’s first-time entering students (FTENS) for the new academic year with an engaging campus tour. 

These tours will take place on the Bloemfontein and South Campuses from 5 to 8 February starting at 12:00, and on the Qwaqwa Campus from 12 to 15 February, with one tour daily, from 14:00. Students must note that the 5 to 8 February schedule aligns with specific colleges each day, which means you should attend on the day specified below for students from your college.

The comprehensive tour route covers vital campus locations, including Protection Services, the Administration buildings, examination venues, Kovsie Health, Student Counselling and Development, Arts and Culture, Callie Human, HMS, Main Building, and many more. The itinerary helps students become familiar with significant facilities on the three UFS campuses.

The Division of Student Affairs aims to make the campus tours even more inclusive by allowing commuter students and late registrants to join a later group of tours, on 12 and 14 February on the Bloemfontein Campus.

Campus Tours

Tour guide

ROUTE: 


Main locations: 

Bloemfontein Campus:
Meet at the Kovsie Village (i.e. the tent next to the EXR registration venue)-> Protection Services (Stopping Point) -> George du Toit -> EXR -> Kovsie Health; SCD; Food Environment Office; Arts and Culture -> Callie Human -> HMS -> Main Building -> ECLA Lab -> Vishuis -> 24-hour study labs -> Stabilis -> Bridge (Bank; Van Schaik) -> FGG -> EBW -> Landbou; Visitors Gate-> Kopanong; Genmin Lectorium -> Computer Lab -> Mabaleng Auditorium -> Winkie Direko (Fundza Offices) -> Ned Education Building -> Modlec; Konica Minolta -> Library (organise in faculty).



South Campus Tour:

Dates: 6 and 8 February 2024
Time: 12:00 
Starting point: Amphitheatre (Outside the cafeteria)

Qwaqwa Campus Tour:

Date: 12 February 2024             
Time: 14:00 (Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences)
Assembly point: Amphitheatre

Date: 13 February 2024             
First time slot: 14:00 (Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences)
Assembly point: Amphitheatre

Date: 14 February 2024
First time slot: 14:00 (Faculty of Education)
Assembly point: Amphitheatre

Date: 15 February 2024             
First time slot: 14:00 (Faculty of the Humanities)
Assembly point: Amphitheatre

Qwaqwa Off Campus Tour

Date: 18 February 2024
Time: 08:00
Assembly point: Amphitheatre

To register for the campus tours, please click here

News Archive

Prof Helene Strauss delves into the emotion and politics of contemporary South African protest cultures
2014-12-22

Prof Helene Strauss from the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of English currently researches the relationship between emotion and politics in contemporary South African public and protest cultures.

The research foregrounds the complex set of concerns opened up by a study of intimacy, read as not simply a sign for emotional and sexual closeness, but more broadly as a complexly mediated site from which to observe the embodied, affective coordinates of various forms of control and contestation. Through the analysis of a range of cultural texts that, for instance, recompose moments of spectacular social upheaval through the lenses of everyday, embodied experience, this research considers what aesthetic responsibility might mean in both post-transitional South Africa and elsewhere.

One aspect of this research charts a gradual shift in South Africa from what is frequently referred to as the ‘liberation euphoria’ of the mid- to late 1990s – and the optimistic fantasies of a future South Africa that characterised dominant public discourse in the period immediately following the political transition – toward an emotional culture in which expressions of anger, disillusionment and disappointment seem to have become relatively widespread.

Prof Strauss asks, for instance, how these public feelings have been managed in the aftermath of events such as the Marikana massacre, and suggests that the affective and temporal dimensions of current attempts at containing perceived threats to financial and political stability on the part of South Africa’s business and political elite are key to understanding increasingly violent and repressive securitisation strategies.

Earlier this year, Prof Strauss presented papers on aspects of this research at two international conferences: (i) the Association for Cultural Studies conference in Tampere, Finland, where she was invited to be part of a ‘Spotlight Panel’ on the topic of African Cultural Studies, (ii) and at a conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, which she helped to co-organise.

An article based on some of this work has been published in the journal Safundi.

For more of Prof Strauss’s research published in journals, follow the links below:
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsaf20/current#.VAf88_mSxqU
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/riij20/15/1#.VAf80vmSxqU
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/sub/journal/v4/n2/index.html

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