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Dr Jared McDonald
Prof Jared McDonald, Assistant Dean: Faculty of The Humanities at the University of the Free State, obtained his first National Research Foundation rating in the C2 category.

Obtaining his first National Research Foundation (NRF) rating has been the goal of Prof Jared McDonald, Assistant Dean: Faculty of The Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS), since 2020 when he was selected for the UFS Transforming the Professoriate Mentoring Programme.

Prof McDonald obtained a C2 rating recently and credits the programme, under the leadership of Dr Henriëtte van den Berg, who provided invaluable support and mentorship, for this achievement. This rating recognises Prof McDonald as an established researcher and he may enjoy some international recognition for the quality and impact of his recent research outputs. 

“I am delighted to have received a C2 rating. I was hoping to obtain a C2, so when I received confirmation, it felt really good. Since being recruited to the Transforming the Professoriate Programme I have been focused on producing a series of quality journal articles, and importantly, my first monograph. At times it was a struggle to balance the demands of being Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Humanities along with my teaching responsibilities,” says Prof McDonald.

He says obtaining the rating would not have been possible without the interventions of the programme, which assisted him in securing funding for a sabbatical. The encouragement of colleagues and family was equally valuable in helping him to keep his eye on the goal.


Research 

As a nineteenth-century historian, Prof McDonald’s, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, research includes topics ranging from the London Missionary Society’s missions to the San as well as the role of controversial missionaries in influencing public discourse on the right to legal equality and social inclusion for indigenous subjects of the British Crown. Another topic is the ways in which evangelical-humanitarian discourse inadvertently provided the justification for the transfer of San children to Cape colonial society. 

“In my publications, the key actors, including Khoesan, are revealed to have been exercising agency in response to a social and political context that was not of their own choosing, but to which they had to respond. The contradictions of the period, coupled with the prospects for blurring the social boundaries of an otherwise strict hierarchical society, provided the means for social manoeuvre and options for resistance from within the confines of the colonial state. I am continuing to explore these ideas in a series of upcoming journal articles and book chapters,” he says. 

The pressure, says Prof McDonald, is already on to retain his rating, and hopefully improve it, when it comes up for review in five years’ time. He is currently working on his second monograph, which is a historical biography of a controversial, but fascinating, missionary who played a notable role in South African history in the early nineteenth century. “The worth of any historical biography lies in the biographer’s ability to shed light on the circumstances, contingencies, and contradictions that shaped the contours of the protagonist’s life, thus illuminating the historical context,” concludes Prof McDonald. 

He seeks to relate his research to his approach to teaching by exploring innovative ways of making the past relevant to students today. This is motivated by the conviction that the elucidation of possibilities of agency in the past raises the prospect for students to engage with the meanings and possibilities of agency in the present.

News Archive

Boyden Observatory turns 120
2009-05-13

 

At the celebration of the 120th year of existence of the UFS's Boyden Observatory are, from the left: Prof. Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS, Prof. Driekie Hay, Vice-Rector: Academic Planning at the UFS, Mr Ian Heyns from AngloGold Ashanti and his wife, Cheryl, and Prof. François Retief, former rector of the UFS and patron of the Friends of Boyden.
Photo: Hannes Pieterse

The Boyden Observatory, one of the oldest observatories in the Southern Hemisphere and a prominent beacon in Bloemfontein, recently celebrated its 120th year of existence.

This milestone was celebrated by staff, students, other dignitaries of the University of the Free State (UFS) and special guests at the observatory last week.

“The observatory provides the Free State with a unique scientific, educational and tourist facility. No other city in South Africa, and few in the world, has a public observatory with telescopes the size and quality of those at Boyden,” said Prof. Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.

The observatory, boasting the third-largest optical telescope in South Africa, has a long and illustrious history. It was established on a temporary site on Mount Harvard near the small town of Chosica, Peru in 1889. Later it was moved to Arequipa in Peru where important astronomical observations were made from 1891 to 1926. “However, due to unstable weather patterns and observing conditions, it was decided to move the Boyden Station to another site somewhere else in the Southern Hemisphere, maybe South Africa,” said Prof. Van Schalkwyk.

South Africa's excellent climatic conditions were fairly well known and in 1927 the instruments were shipped and the Boyden Station was set up next to Maselspoort near Bloemfontein. Observations began in September 1927 and in 1933 the new site was officially completed, including the 60 inch (1.5 m) telescope, which was then the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. This telescope was recently refurbished to a modern research instrument.

The observatory has various other telescopes and one of them, the 13" refractor telescope, which was sent to Arequipa in 1891 and later to Bloemfontein, is still in an excellent condition. Another important telescope is the Watcher Robotic Telescope of the University College Dublin, which conducts many successful observations of gamma ray bursts.

“In the first few decades of the twentieth century, the Boyden Observatory contributed considerably to our understanding of the secrets of the universe at large. The period luminosity relationship of the Cepheid variable stars was, for example, discovered from observations obtained at Boyden. This relationship is one of the cornerstones of modern astrophysics. It is currently used to make estimates of the size and age of the universe from observations of the Hubble Space Telescope,” said Prof. Van Schalkwyk.

“The Boyden Observatory contributed to the university’s astrophysics research group being able to produce the first M.Sc. degrees associated with the National Space Science Programme (NASSAP) in the country and the Boyden Science Centre plays an important role in science and technology awareness of learners, teachers and the general public,” said Prof. Van Schalkwyk.

The Boyden Science Centre has also formed strong relationships with various institutions, including the South African Agency for the Advancement of Science and Technology (SAASTA) and the Department of Science and Technology. The centre has already conducted many different projects for the Department of Science and Technology, including National Science Week projects, as well as National Astronomy Month projects. It also serves as one of the hosts of SAASTA’s annual Astronomy Quiz.

Media Release:
Lacea Loader
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za
13 May 2009
 

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