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Prof Jared McDonald achieves his 2020 goal by obtaining first NRF rating

06 February 2025 | Story André Damons | Photo Supplied

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

UFS establishes a Postgraduate office

2007-07-18

The University of the Free State (UFS) will establish a postgraduate office that will serve as a one-stop service for the co-ordination of academic support services for postgraduate students.

According to the Director: Research Development at the UFS, Prof Frans Swanepoel, the primary purpose of the Postgraduate Office is to provide co-ordination and support services for postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as academic staff across the University.

“Guided by values such as intellectual inquiry, innovation, collegiality, integrity and efficiency, the Postgraduate Office will seek to foster a challenging, inclusive and supportive environment for postgraduate teaching, learning, research and scholarship; and will strive to engage students in the vibrant life of a research university”, Prof Swanepoel said.

All sectors of the University, namely students, faculties and staff, stand to benefit from the establishment of this office. Amongst other benefits for these sectors, postgraduate students and postdoctoral research fellows will have their interests promoted in synergy with faculty and departmental facilities. On the other hand, the office will provide a critical resource to the faculties in the form of a single database of postgraduate students, postgraduate topics, supervisors and funding opportunities. Furthermore, it will serve as a useful resource and base for training and information for younger and less experienced staff members.

The establishment of this office will be undertaken in two phases. The first phase will focus on the most critical areas that will make an immediate impact and the second phase on those areas that are not as urgent.

Areas that will be prioritised include the appointment of a manager and co-ordination of stakeholders, the provision of information and communication, useful resources for the UFS, policy administration and monitoring, postgraduate supervisors’ facilitation, recruitment activities, advice and referral, and postgraduate scholarship and bursary management.

The less urgent components of the office will be the development and implementation of academic and professional support programmes, the formation of a research information commons to create an integrated learning environment for postgraduate students, and the development of a postgraduate association or a postgraduate students’ liaison committee to provide a recognised channel of communication between postgraduate students and the University authorities.

The Postgraduate Office will form a vital component of the Directorate Research Development (DRD) at the UFS because of its experience and a noteworthy track record with regard to a facilitative and co-ordinating role that would be essential for the office.

“Establishing the Postgraduate Office as part of the Directorate would give the Centre the necessary links to the research-related issues that are important to most of the postgraduate students at the UFS. Of essential importance will be the linkages with the full spectrum of Strategic Clusters”, Prof Swanepoel explained.

“An important component of the Postgraduate Office will be related to international students and international opportunities for UFS postgraduate students. As the Office for Internationalisation has similarly been placed within the Directorate, the work of the Postgraduate Office will be facilitated by similar placement within the same Directorate”, he concluded.

Media release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt.stg@mail.ufs.ac.za
18 July 2007

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