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21 October 2024 | Story André Damons | Photo Supplied
Prof Helene Strauss
Prof Helene Strauss, a distinguished professor in the Department of English at the University of the Free State (UFS), will be joining the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) as an individual fellow.

Prof Helene Strauss, a distinguished professor in the Department of English at the University of the Free State (UFS), has been selected for an individual fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) for 2025.

Prof Strauss, who was awarded the prestigious 2022 UFS Book Prize for Distinguished Scholarship during the annual UFS Research Awards last year, says she feels lucky to be given this opportunity. She will be in residence at STIAS for the period 14 July to 12 December. 

“I am especially looking forward to joining the 2025 cohort of STIAS fellows and to spending quality time with peers from across the disciplinary spectrum. I have heard only good things about this experience,” she says.

According to the STIAS website, the institute invests in experts who work across disciplinary borders to tackle issues ranging from health equity to complexity theory, the effects of race to quantum information. STIAS was established to provide a “creative space for the mind”, a fellowship programme that would advance cross-disciplinary research at the highest level. Modelled on similar institutes internationally, STIAS is the first of its kind in Africa.

Reprioritising academic quality

Researchers and intellectuals selected for individual fellowships are invited to join “a cohort of leading thinkers in a creative space for the mind”.

“STIAS offers researchers an invaluable opportunity to step away from the ongoing clutter of teaching and administrative work. I appreciate their invitation to fellows to de-prioritise ‘quantitative performance measures while reprioritising academic quality as characterised by communication, curiosity, surprise, discovery, and societal relevance’ during their STIAS residency.”

Prof Strauss says: “I will be working on a book titled Phytospheric Justice”, whose research is about the symbiotic atmospheric pathways that connect plant and human breath. “I am interested in how literary and other creative cultural texts might open pathways towards ‘decolonial air conditioning’ (Hsuan Hsu) and the restoring – and re-storying – of human-plant kinship relations.

“In short,” Prof Strauss continues, “my book will consider how novelists, poets, artists, botanists and environmental activists across a range of global sites chart alternatives to breath-depleting atmospherics. I am curious especially about how creative cultural workers in contexts with overlapping histories of colonisation, deforestation and extractive violence imagine post-smog futures and advance the flourishing of multi-species breath.”

According to Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Internationalisation at the UFS, this fellowship is not only a confirmation that Professor Strauss’s scholarship is deemed important and cutting-edge, but with this award, Prof Strauss also represents the interests of all UFS faculty in seeking out the best ways for us to support researchers as they exploit their curiosity, create their own research agendas, seek funding and other resources, and translate their work into relevant outcomes. “The STIAS fellowship is an honour befitting the work she has done and plans to undertake. It makes not just the Faculty of Humanities, but the entire university proud of this formidable recognition,” says Prof Reddy.

News Archive

Students receive hands-on crime scene investigation training
2016-09-02

Description: Crime scene investigation training Tags: Crime scene investigation training

Ntau Mafisa, a forensic science honours student
at the UFS, and Captain Samuel Sethunya from
the SAPS Crime Scene Management in
Bloemfontein.
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

With murder and robbery rates on the rise, the Forensic Science Programme of the Department of Genetics at the University of the Free State is playing a key role in training South Africa’s future crime scene investigators and forensic laboratory analysts.

According to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), murder and aggravated robbery rates for 2014/2015, as recorded by the South African Police Services (SAPS) have increased. Incidents of murder increased by 4.6% in the period from 2013/2014 to 2014/2015 and aggravated robbery increased by 8.5 % in the same period. The ISS is an African organisation thant enhances human security by providing independent and authoritative research, expert policy advice and capacity building.

Dr Ellen Mwenesongole, a forensic science lecturer at the Department of Genetics, said the university was one of a few universities in South Africa that actually had a forensic science programme, especially starting from undergraduate level.

Crime scene evaluation component incorporated in curriculum
As part of its Forensic Science Honours Programme, the department has, for the first time, incorporated a mock crime scene evaluation component in its curriculum. Students process a mock crime scene and are assessed based on how closely they follow standard operating procedures related to crime scenes and subsequent laboratory analysis of items of possible evidential value.

The mock crime scene forms part of a research project data collection of the honours students. In these projects students utilise different analytical methods to analyse and distinguish between different types of evidence such as hair fibres, cigarette butts, illicit drugs and dyes extracted from questioned documents and lipsticks.

Students utilise different analytical methods to analyse
and distinguish between different types of evidence.

This year, the department trained the first group of nine students in the Forensic Science Honours Programme. Dr Mwenesongole, who received her training in the UK at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, said incorporating a crime scene evaluation component into the curriculum was a global trend at universities that were offering forensic science programmes.

Department of Genetics and SAPS collaborate
It is important to add this component to the student’s curriculum. In this way the university is equipping students not only with theoretical knowledge but practical knowledge on the importance of following proper protocol when collecting evidence at crime scenes and analysing it in the laboratory to reduce the risk of it becoming inadmissible in a court of law.

The Genetics Department has a good working relationship with the Forensic Science Laboratory and Free State Crime Scene Management of the Division Forensic Services of the SAPS. The mock crime scene was set up and assessed in collaboration with the Crime Scene Management Division of the SAPS. Although the SAPS provides specialist advanced training to its staff members, the university hopes to improve employability for students through such programmes.

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