FLTR: Prof Deidre van Rooyen, Prof Frikkie Maré and Prof Gladys Kigozi.
(Prof Lodewyk Sutton and Prof Henco van der Westhuizen was absent when photo was taken)
The Transformation of the Professoriate Program are pleased to announce the promotion of five members to Associate Professoriate level. They are Professors Gladys Kigozi, Deidre Van Rooyen, Frikkie Maré, Lodewyk Sutton and Henco Van der Westhuizen.
Prof Gladys Kigozi joined the centre for Health Systems Research and Development in 2007. In 2011, she obtained a PhD on facilitating factors and barriers to the uptake of HIV testing among TB patients in the Free State Province. She has worked in the field of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS since 2007. She seeks to understand the structural and socio-behavioural 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. Dr 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 published 39 peer-reviewed journal articles in national and international 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.
Prof Deidré van Rooyen works as a senior researcher for the Centre for Development Support and serves as Programme Director of the Development Studies Programme. She completed her PHD in 2012 in Development Studies (Civic culture and local economic development in a small town), followed by the completion of a certificate course in Social Entrepreneurship at the Gordon’s Institute of Business Studies (University of Pretoria) in 2014. She supervised several Masters and PHD Students with diverse topics and authored and co-authored numerous research reports and published widely in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, journals and books (13 chapters). In 2018 Dr van Rooyen co-edited her first book through Routledge publishers - Mining and Community in South Africa. From Small Town to Iron Town and co-edited two more books in 2021 – Coal and energy in South Africa. Considering a just transition published by Edinburgh University press and Mining and community in the South African platinum belt: A decade after Marikana published by Nova Publishers. Furthermore, she obtained a Y2 National Research Foundation Rating in 2018 as a researcher. Her specialisation fields of research are Social Entrepreneurship (SE) and Local Economic Development (LED) in small towns.
Prof Frikkie Maré completed his PhD Agricultural Economics in 2018 and currently serves as Academic Department Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics. He has extensive knowledge of the livestock industry and red meat market. His research mainly centres around the livestock industry with focus on beef and sheep production and feedlot economics, price transmission in the red meat value chain, and water footprint analysis of red meat. He is also the Editor of Veeplaas (an agricultural magazine), and serves on a number of comittees and councils both nationally and internationally. He has published 23 peer reviewed articles, presented 14 papers at international scientific conferences and another eight at national conferences. He successfully supervised 10 Master’s and two PhD students. He is also very active as columnist in popular agricultural media and write approximately 40 articles per year for magazines such as Veeplaas, Stockfarm, and Landbou Weekblad. He is involved with weekly radio interviews (OFM, RSG) and produce 100 market reports and 2 interviews per year for televisions programs. He further acted as invited speaker at more than 50 agricultural producers’ congresses, conferences, annual meetings and farmers’ days.
Prof. Lodewyk Sutton completed his LLB degree at UNISA and became a qualified advocate. In 2007, he studied at the University of Pretoria where he obtained his BTh, BA Honours Ancient Languages and Cultures, and MDiv degrees, all with distinction. In 2014, his MTh degree was upgraded to the PhD programme, resulting in him being the first theological student at the University of Pretoria whose MTh was upgraded to a doctorate. In 2015, he obtained his PhD in Old Testament Studies, with a thesis titled “A trilogy of war and renewed honour? Psalms 108, 109 and 110 as a literary composition”. He was a Research Fellow in the Department of Old Testaments Studies (Faculty of Theology) at the University of Pretoria until the end of 2017. He was appointed in the Department Old and New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of the Free State in 2018 and currently he serves as Head of the Department.. He completed a MA in Semitic languages at the Department of Ancient Languages and Cultures (Faculty of Humanities, UP) in 2019. He also served as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church Lyttelton East for over five years and is still an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. His field of research is the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible). In the Psalms he researches Psalms from the perspectives of “Literary space” (narrative space or theory, social space and ancient Near Eastern spatial orientation), “body” (anthropology in the Old Testament) and “war” (imagery and language) as to indicate the relation between Psalms, called the “shape and shaping of the Psalter” (part of Canonical‐criticism method).
Prof. Henco Van der Westhuizen completed his PhD in Systematic Theology in 2014 at University of Stellenbosch. His research interests focus on intersections between Pneumatology, Philosophy, and Public Theology. After completing a monograph on the intersection of Pneumatology and Public Theology, he is exploring the intersections of Pneumatology and Philosophy, more particularly, the intersections between theologies of Spirit and language, hermeneutics, phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction. During 2021 Prof van der Westhuizen authored the book: Faith Active in Love: On the Theology of Michael Welker, Berlin, Peter Lang. and he also served as editor of the forthcoming book: Letters to a Young Theologian, Minneapolis, Fortress Press.