Prof Brownhilder Neneh completed her doctorate degree in 2013 in Business Management with the thesis titled “Returns on Initial Public offerings (IPOs) on the Johannesburg Security Exchange: Success and Failure patterns”. She was appointed in 2016 as a senior lecturer in the Department of Business Management, University of the Free State. Brownhilder Neneh is currently an associate professor and academic chair (HOD) for the department of Business Management at the University of the Free State.  Her research is primarily based in the field of entrepreneurship where she looks at different aspects of a business venture from business gestation activities to performance, growth, and exit.  She also focuses on some niche areas in entrepreneurship, such as women’s and student’s entrepreneurship. In women’s entrepreneurship, she examines unique issues that affect women-owned businesses and unearth how the family and business domains are intertwined both to the benefit and detriment of these women entrepreneurs to provide evidence-based approaches for mitigating the challenges and leveraging the benefits.   For student’s entrepreneurship, she is particularly concerned about how students can move from simply having business ideas to actually acting on those ideas and turning them into real  enterprises. She was a 2019 Winner of the Emerald Literati Awards for Highly Commended paper published in the African Journal of Economics and Management studies (AJEMS). She also won the award for being the best senior researcher at the faculty of Economics and Management Sciences. She recently co-edited a textbook by Cengage is titled ‘Foundations of Business Management in South Africa, 1st Edition. Some of her academic research has appeared in prominent impact factor international journals like the Journal of Small business management, Journal of vocational behavior, personality and individuals differences, Journal of entrepreneurship, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services Studies in Higher Education, Education + Training and Spanish Journal of Psychology etc.

She is currently serving as an editorial board member for IBC conference and the Students and Women Entrepreneurship African Journal short SWEAJ. She has also been a guest speaker at several entrepreneurship events such as UFS lunchtime webinar on the intersection between science and entrepreneurship, Surcolombiana University in Neiva, Colombia, Entrepreneurship week hosted by the UFS, Smart Procurement World Free State Smart Procurement World Free State- Good Governance, Innovative Strategies & High Impact Procurement-  and UFS Thought leadership series.

She is currently collaborating on a project on women entrepreneurship with Prof, Dianne Welsh, the Hayes Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship, at the Bryan School of Business & Economics, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is also working in collaboration with the center for development support and sustainable agriculture and the Glasgow Caledonian University on the SYSE (Supporting youth social entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa: partnerships, barriers and opportunities ) project and also part of the project titled “Building African Capacities for the Development of Clusters” presented by the University of Jena and Technopolis.

Dr Sevias Guvuriro is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics and Finance (University of the Free State), the position he holds since August 2018. He graduated with his PhD in June 2017. Dr Guvuriro is also a University of Michigan African Presidential Scholar (UMAPS) for the January – May 2022 cohort. He also teaches at the University of Bremen summer school. His research interests are in behavioral development economics and he is actively publishing in this field. His work revolves around dynamics of intra-household decision-making processes; investments in family-type public goods; and relevance of risk, time and social preferences on development issues, including health related decisions. Using experimental and survey data, Dr Guvuriro employs contemporary econometrics techniques in his work. This has made his work getting published in highly ranked international journals such as Plos ONE, Review of the economics of the household (REHO), Review of Development Economics (RDE), Personality and Individual Differences (PAID), International Journal of Financial Studies (IJFS), International Journal of Social Economics (IJSE), and regional journals such as Development Southern Africa (DSA) and South African Journal of Economics (SAJE). He is also building strong networks, currently collaborating with researchers from other universities in South Africa (specifically WITS and UCT) and international universities (Ku Leuven & Bremen Universities). Dr Guvuriro loves his classroom, and he teaches with passion.

Dr Maria Tsakeni joined the University of the Free State (Faculty of Education) as a post-doctoral student in April 2015 after completing her PhD at the University of Pretoria in the same year. Her PhD was in science education and focused on “The influence of teacher professional identity on inquiry-based practical work in school chemistry.” She coordinates a Faculty of Education directorate at the Qwaqwa campus, namely, Postgraduate, Research and Engaged Scholarship. She also champions the Faculty of Education curriculum renewal at the Qwaqwa campus, a programme that falls under the institutional PQM transformation and renewal initiative. She is part of a number of committees in the Faculty of Education. She is a science teacher educator and senior lecturer. Her current research project focuses on the preparation of preservice science teachers to implement innovative teaching strategies to develop 21^st century skills in learners in multiple-deprived classrooms for sustainable development. The study is influenced by existence of multiple-deprived science classrooms in QwaQwa rural and township schools. The study also extends to similar places in Lesotho and Zimbabwe. She was awarded a Thuthuka grant in the NRF rating category for the period 2019-2021. She received some Qwaqwa campus awards in the Faculty of Education as the (i) Best emerging researcher in 2017 (ii) Prolific researcher in 2018 and an award for (iii) Excellence in Teaching and Learning Research Award in 2018. Her research interest lies chiefly innovative teaching strategies for practical work, inquiry-based science education, STEM education and education for sustainable development in science education. She also collaborates on instructional leadership for science and mathematics as a minor research interest. Her research outputs can be viewed on Google Scholar and Research Gate.

Prof Corlia Janse van Vuuren joined the University of the Free State at the beginning of 2004 in the Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Sciences. She obtained her interdisciplinary PhD (Higher Education Studies & Physiotherapy) in 2005. This specific postgraduate programme was implemented in the Department of Physiotherapy in 2012 and several students have graduated from this programme since.
Prof Corlia, headed the Department of Physiotherapy from 2010 to 2013, when she decided to focus more specifically on Higher Education studies/ Learning and Teaching and moved to the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences as the Teaching and Learning Manager (TLM). During her time as TLM, she has dedicated most of her research to Higher Education studies, with a specific focus on  student and/or staff success. Within the broader field of student and/or staff success her interests are linked to new developments within the field, such as utilizing data analytics effectively to inform both student success interventions, and staff development interventions; the impact of psychological well-being on student success (and later staff success); the development of graduate attributes (such as communication skills) also against the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution and decolonization; and the use of data in Higher Education management. Due to her specific research focus, she was privileged to be selected to the Teaching Advancement at University (TAU) programme in 2015/2016, hosted by the DHET in collaboration with HELTASA. The TAU programme supported her development as a scholar within the field of Higher Education studies and after successfully completing the programme, She continued with her research within this field. In 2019, she returned to the Faculty of Health Sciences as the Head of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and is continuing her Higher Education research also within the health professions domain.

Dr Jolly Musoke is a senior medical scientist in a joint appointment with the National Health Laboratory Services, Universitas and the Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Free State. She obtained her PhD in Veterinary Tropical Diseases from the University of Pretoria, in the year 2016. One of her main research interests is investigating the prevalence, molecular epidemiology, and potential transmission of zoonotic diseases (i.e. tuberculosis and brucellosis) at the one health platform. She also has a keen interest in establishing mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and virulence factors in hospital outbreaks. Her work also includes epidemiological investigation of clinically novel pathogens such as hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumonia. Dr Musoke and her well renowned collaborators has published work in both high impact international and local journals. Dr Musoke has received numerous grants including the National Research Foundation (NRF) - Thuthuka grant.

Dr Ntsoaki Matumelo Lucia Meko was appointed in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics first as an ‘intern’ and departmental assistant in 2003. Her permanent appointment was in January 2008 as a lecturer in the Department, and at the time she was responsible for basic nutrition as a senior lecture.  Dr Meko obtained her PhD in 2010, titled: Factors…My teaching area is in Community Nutrition and Community Service Learning.  My research focus has evolved from mainly focusing on Overweight and obesity to a focus including Nutrition Interventions, Infant and Young Child Feeding and Food Insecurity. 

ACADEMIC AWARDS
2005:  
Academic Honours Colours for outstanding achievements in the degree M Sc (Dietetics), University of the Free State.
2003 - 2007:
Atlantic Philanthropies Scholarship for postgraduate studies.

TEACHING AND LEARNING AWARDS
2014:
Vice Rector’s Award for Community Engagement: Community Engagement (University of the Free State).
2018:
Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching and Learning 2018 (University of the Free State)

Prof Martin Nyaga obtained his Ph.D. degree in Medical Virology at the University of Limpopo, MEDUNSA campus. He was appointed in 2016 as a Researcher/Lecturer at the University of the Free State-Next Generation Sequencing (UFS-NGS) Unit and the Division of Virology. He was promoted to a Senior Researcher/Lecturer in 2018 and in January 2021, he was promoted to an Associate Professor within the UFS-NGS unit and Division of Virology. 

He has previously been a Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD, USA and at the Laboratory of Viral Metagenomics, KU Leuven-University of Leuven, Belgium. He has also served at the Medical Research Council-Diarrhoeal Pathogens Research Unit (MRC-DPRU), which is one of the two WHO Regional Reference Laboratories for rotavirus research in Africa, where he coordinated the African rotavirus genomics project and the human Microbiome and Metagenomics studies. He was part of the team that undertook the Phase II and III Rotarix rotavirus vaccine efficacy clinical trials and pre- and post- rotavirus vaccination surveillance studies for numerous African countries. He has published 37 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, deposited over 44,000 full-length genome sequences at the NCBI GenBank and supervised over 25 postgraduate students.

Prof Nyaga is currently investigating the long-term effects of the introduction of the monovalent RV1 vaccine in three African countries (Ghana, Malawi and South Africa), through the African Enteric Viruses Genome Initiative (AEVGI). The AEVGI is a consortium of young researchers from Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and South Africa borne out of the African Rotavirus Surveillance Network (ARSN), and which Prof Nyaga is the Principal Investigator and a co-founder. One of the goals of the Initiative is to leverage a genomics and bioinformatics approach to complement the routine work being done by the ARSN. Likewise, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the UFS-NGS Unit as a Collaborating Centre (CC) for Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPD) Surveillance and Pathogen Genomics surveillance (2020-2024), of which  Prof Nyaga is the Director. This WHO CC is undertaking studies on whole genome sequencing of rotavirus positive samples obtained from pre- and post- RV1, the pentavalent RV5 and the newer rotavirus vaccines in children from Zambia and Rwanda, Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burkina Faso. In addition, Prof Nyaga leads a gut and respiratory virome metagenomics studies funded by a Self-Initiated South African Medical Research Council (SIR-SAMRC) grant and a grant from the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation (PRF). The aim of this research is to establish the role played by the gut and respiratory virome in young children over time, to effect normal and metabolic disorders that may influence a child’s healthy growth or impact medical conditions such as obesity later in life. He collaborates with numerous local and International associates and was awarded an NRF Y2-rating in 2018-2023 for his work in rotavirus genomics.

Prof Gladys Kigozi has worked in the field of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS since 2007. She seeks to understand the structural and socio-behavioral dimensions of (integrated) TB and HIV/AIDS management and to monitor the implementation of TB and HIV-related policies in public healthcare facilities and communities. Other areas of interest include occupational health, human resources for health, and mental health. Prof Kigozi has participated in several basic, operational, and intervention research projects. She has disseminated her work at more than 40 conferences locally and internationally and in 39 peer-reviewed journals. Currently, she is leading a project to explore the experiences of common mental disorders in patients on TB treatment. The project is funded by both the National Research Foundation and the South African Medical Research Council. She is also a co-researcher on three COVID-19-related projects together with experts from the University of the Free State, Free State Department of Health, and the World Health Organization.

Contribution to previous research

HIV-TB stigma
Occupationally acquired TB poses a major threat to healthcare workers (HCWs) in South Africa. HCWs are also greatly affected by the dual TB-HIV epidemic. A major challenge with the dual epidemic is that HCWs are reluctant to undertake HIV and TB testing and to access treatment and care timeously due to associated HIV and TB stigma. However, given the serious shortages of human resources for health facing public health service delivery in South Africa, it is imperative for HCW to access HIV and TB treatment. Yet, little has been done internationally and nationally to address HIV and TB stigma among HCWs. This research project addressed the problem of HIV and TB stigma among HCWs in the Free State, South Africa. More specifically the research sought (1) to scientifically assess the extent, sources, and consequences of HIV and TB-related stigma among HCWs and (2) to develop and test an evidence-based intervention to reduce stigma. Results established differential patterns of internal and external stigma among HCWs. Dr Kigozi contributed to the study design and data gathering instruments as well as review of manuscripts resulting from this study.

Tuberculosis case-finding
Prof Kigozi led a study to assess the yield of systematic household contact TB investigation (SHCI) as a case-finding strategy. Household contacts of four categories of TB index cases were targeted including 1) children <5 years, 2) HIV co-infected pulmonary TB (PTB) cases (≥5 years), 3) HIV-negative PTB cases (≥5 years), and 4) multidrug-resistant TB cases. The highest yield of new TB cases was reported among contacts of HIV-negative TB index cases. The high overall yield of new TB among household contacts in this study demonstrated that targeted SHCI may be an effective active case-finding strategy.

Tuberculosis infection prevention and control
Despite intensified efforts to curb the disease, TB remains a challenge to the country’s health system and overall population health outcomes. The high incidence of TB can partly be attributed to poor TB prevention and infection control in healthcare facilities and rapid spread within communities. Prof Kigozi participated in research to investigate the extent of implementation of TB prevention and infection control strategies in primary healthcare (PHC) facilities in Mangaung metropolitan. Overall, TB infection control was poorly implemented at the facilities. In particular, more than a third of the facilities did not have an infection control committee and three-quarters did not have separate waiting areas for TB/coughing patients and general patients, less than one-third of the facilities had open windows in the consultation room on the day of the field visit and the majority of TB nurses were not wearing N95 respirators. The most frequently reported barrier to implementing good TB infection control was the lack of available equipment and the structure/layout of the PHC facilities.

Tuberculosis-HIV/AIDS
In collaboration with colleagues, Prof Kigozi explored the TB-HIV co-epidemic in Central South Africa between 2007 and 2015. The research determined that multi-faceted barriers and facilitators contributed to TB patients’ uptake of HIV testing. Despite the recommendation to integrate these services, it was not always the case due to several patient and institutional-level factors. She participated in the conceptualization of the research, development of data gathering instruments as well as data analysis and reporting.

Dr Jared McDonald is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Free State’s Qwaqwa Campus, where he has worked since 2014. In 2018, he was appointed the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. For 18 months in 2018 and 2019, he also served as the Acting Campus Vice-Principal: Academic & Research of the Qwaqwa Campus. McDonald obtained his PhD in History from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 2015 with his thesis titled, “Subjects of the Crown: Khoesan Identity and Assimilation in the Cape Colony, c.1795-1858”.

His research interests include indigenous responses to British colonialism in the Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, the work of the London Missionary Society in southern Africa, comparative histories of settler-colonialism and genocide, and histories of children as victims of genocide. He has published articles on these themes in the Journal of Genocide Research and the South African Historical Journal and has contributed chapters to recent works such as Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash (Berghahn Books) and Chosen Peoples: The Bible, Race and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press). McDonald is also a project scholar and the lead contact for southern African research for Livingstone Online, a digital humanities project that preserves and curates through digitization the surviving manuscripts of the nineteenth century missionary-explorer, David Livingstone. In 2019, a sub-project titled “Livingstone’s Manuscripts in South Africa (1843-1872)”, which was co-directed by McDonald, won an award from the Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE) of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in the United States. The CSE seal of approval recognises the project as being of high scholarly impact and indicates “the high esteem in which the CSE holds the edition”. 

Dr Jacques Matthee was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in the Department: Private Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of the Free State, ZA in 2017. Matthee has since also been appointed as the Programme Director: LLB and Teaching & Learning at the same institution. In 2004 and 2007 he obtained his LLB and LLM respectively from the NWU (Potchefstroom Campus). He obtained his LLD titled 'One Person’s Culture is Another Person’s Crime: A Cultural Defence in South African law?' in 2014. Since 2009 Matthee has published articles dealing with Criminal law issues on an interdisciplinary basis. He has developed educational products for books on the Law of Succession, Law of Civil Procedure, Criminal law, Law of Criminal Procedure, Law of Evidence, Legal Pluralism and African Customary law. In
2013 he participated in a televised discussion of the controversial Traditional Courts Bill. Matthee has made numerous conference contributions, both in South Africa and abroad, dealing with the “cultural defence in criminal law”. He is currently involved in projects dealing with cultural diversity and legal pluralism issues. Matthee has received numerous awards and scholarships throughout his studies and career. Some of these include being a scholarship holder of both the “DAAD-NRF Joint In-Country Scholarship Programme for Postgraduate Studies” in South Africa and the “Stichting Studiefonds voor Zuid-Afrikaanse Studenten” in the Netherlands, receiving a Graduate Scholar Award at the 12th
International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations, and receiving a sponsorship for junior researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Matthee has research and lecturing experience in Criminal law, Law of Criminal Procedure, Legal Pluralism, African Customary law and Medical Law. His current research interest is on the conflict between culture, religion and crime. Apart from academia, Matthee is also an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He was a member of the National Bar Council of South Africa for the period 2015 to July 2017. He was also an associate member of the National Forum of Advocates for the period 2017 to 2021.

Dr Liezel Alsemgeest is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the School of Financial Planning Law. She obtained her PhD in Business Management

She focus on the niche area of personal finance as her exclusive research focus. In South Africa, specifically, there exist very few researchers that focus on personal finance. As it is an emerging field, her research is mainly exploratory and has a multidisciplinary angle that focus on the central theme of communication about personal finances and include aspects such as attitudes, behaviors (such as saving, spending and interacting with money), thoughts, feelings, psychology and retirement.

Up to date (since 2008), she has published 17 accredited articles of which 12 were published in the last 8 years, of which 50% are listed in the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Her research is multidisciplinary, as she has published in various business, financial services, consumer behavior, social sciences, higher education and vocational specific journals.

Dr Lintle Mohase is a senior lecturer at the Department of Plant Sciences and served as the Botany subject head from 2019 to 2021 at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She obtained her PhD (Botany) in 2004, where she worked on the “Biochemical events associated with rust resistance in sunflower” at the same university. This study received a Bronze medal for the best PhD thesis (2005) in Southern Africa by the South African Association of Botanists and the Professor E. M van Zinderen Bakker prize for an outstanding PhD study at the Department of Plant Sciences.

In 2005, she took a post-doctoral position of 18 months at the Sördertöns University College, Sweden, where she studied molecular mechanisms of host resistance to aphids. In 2009, she completed a master’s degree in higher education studies with a mini dissertation entitled “Quality assurance in postgraduate studies: student-related factors influencing completion rates”. She is a member of the South African Association of Botanists and the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions.

Her research interests are in the physiology/biochemistry of plant-insect interactions, particularly wheat challenged with the Russian wheat aphid (RWA, Diuraphis noxia). Her primary research examines how aphid infestation affects wheat at protein and metabolite levels. She investigates the critical enzymes associated with biosynthetic pathways of signaling molecules such as reactive oxygen species and the associated antioxidants and defence-related hormones such as salicylic, jasmonic and abscisic acids. Furthermore, she investigates the potential of phytohormones and non-pathogenic microorganisms as priming agents to enhance plant resistance to pests. She additionally investigates the effect of changing weather patterns, particularly drought, on plant resilience to pests.

In her research, she collaborates with entomologists from the Agricultural Research Council-Small Grains, Bethlehem, and pathologists, molecular biologists, physiologists and biochemists at the University of the Free State. She disseminates her research findings in various scientific conferences and peer-reviewed journals, and in 2019, she received a research grant (Competitive Support for Unrated Researchers; 2019-2021) from the National Research Foundation.

In the last three years, she supervised four PhD, 4 MSc and 5 Hons students. She also offers undergraduate teaching from the first year to Hons level (The Interdependence of plants and life on earth, Introductory plant development and biotechnology, Plant defense and biotechnology, Plant defense and applications).

Prof Olusola (Shola) Ololade (Ph.D.) was appointed as a lecturer at the Centre for Environmental Management, University of the Free State Bloemfontein Campus, on March 1^st 2015. She obtained her PhD in Environmental Management from the University of Johannesburg in 2012 with a thesis titled “Evaluation of the environmental impacts and sustainability of mining in the Rustenburg region”. She is currently an Associate Professor in Environmental Management at the University of the Free State (Bloemfontein, South Africa). Her research interest include land use/cover analysis, integrated water resources management, water-energy-food nexus, Mining and sustainability, and sustainable development.

Shola has authored/co-authored more than 35 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, nine chapters in books and five peer- reviewed conference proceedings. She was the PI of four completed projects and co-PI of one current project. She was also a recipient of the NRF Post-Doctoral Scarce Skill Scholarship in 2015 and was awarded three different grants from the University of the Free State in support of her research. In 2019, she was nominated and selected into the UFS future professoriate programme. In 2020 she was nominated and elected a full member of Sigma Xi Scientific Honour Society, which started in 1836 in Cornel University, USA and elected one of the eight foundation members of the Global Research committee in Sigma Xi in 2021. Also in 2021 she was accepted as a Life Fellow Member: International Society for Development and Sustainability due to her contribution to environmental sustainability research. Shola serves as a mentor in a few mentoring programmes especially for young female academics. She regularly acts as reviewer for more than 15 international journals and has presented 20 conference papers, 17 of which are at international conferences including one as a keynote speaker and one as a plenary speaker.

Prof Samuel Adelabu received the B.Sc. degree in Meteorology from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, and the M.Sc. degree in environmental science from the University of Botswana. He Graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy (Science Specialization in Remote Sensing) from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His study focuses on remote sensing of insect defoliation in Mopane woodland. His main research lies in the use of remote sensing (RS) in monitoring forest health, ecosystem Dynamic and climate change. He has also focused on the use of climate parameters to understand growing seasons in semi-arid environment. He has worked at the University of Botswana as graduate assistant and contract Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

He is currently Lecturing at the University of the Free State as a Professor (Associate) coordinating the Earth Observation unit with focus on the GIS and Remote Sensing. His emerging research niche is in the application of Remote Sensing to land-use/Landcover change, fire risk, Vegetation analysis and agricultural Practices in Mountainous region. This is particularly of great interest to him considering the limitations of the application of remote sensing to mountainous region due to its terrain leading to neglect of ecological and biodiversity processes within the region. Samuel is actively involved with Afromontane Research Unit of the University where he has received funding for different projects in and around the QwaQwa Mountainous region using remote sensing.

He has published more than 30 peer reviewed articles in ISI accredited Journals. He also currently review for various ISI accredited Journals such as International Journal of Remote Sensing, Remote Sensing Letters, Geocarto International, African Journal of Ecology, Florida Entomologist, Tropical Ecology, South African Journal of Science, Journal of Spatial Science, Remote Sensing, International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, International Journal of Environmental Research among others. He has attended many International conferences and organized many workshops both Nationally and internationally which has led to collaboration with various Universities in the Africa Continent and oversee. Also, he attended the Earth Summit, an International Conference organized by the Canadian Remote Sensing Society in Montreal Canada and International Geosciences and Remote sensing Symposium in Valencia, Spain and subsequently in Yokohama Japan, Hawaii USA, and Brussels Belgium among others where he presented more than 12 peer reviewed conference proceedings papers. Samuel is currently a council member of Society of Southern Africa Geographer and have membership in several international bodies such as IEEE, ISPRS, SSAG among others.  He is also currently the Head of Department of Geography at the University of the Free state.