Africa Speaks Lecture Series

College of Human Sciences

One of the most promising projects started in 2008 in the College of Human Sciences (CHS) was the African Visiting Scholar Lecture Series. This innovative lecture series was established by the CHS under the leadership of its then Executive Dean, Professor Rosemary Moeketsi, to achieve a number of objectives that are aimed at improving the research capacity of the College and enhancing a critical discourse by academics in the CHS with African intellectuals on the African continent and in the diaspora.

Vision

The vision of the Africa Speaks lecture series is to nurture, develop and sustain a vibrant community of researchers and intellectuals in the CHS connected to the African continent and diaspora so that we can continue to be innovative in our quest for truth and our contributions to universal knowledge and the transformative needs of a developmental African state.

Objectives:

To provide a platform and framework for accomplished and vibrant African scholars and intellectuals from the continent and the African diaspora to address the Unisa academic community on a wide range of issues that are relevant to Africa and Africans.
To expose academics and especially young researchers in the CHS to the rich research and intellectual developments taking place on the African continent and among peoples of African descent in the Diaspora.
To provide an intellectual platform on which Unisa academics can celebrate achievements of African scholarship and create an intellectual space through which these ideas can be debated and enriched by organic African intellectuals resident within and outside the African continent.
To develop a new architecture of research rooted in Africa, in its challenges, its past, present and future; and in the process invigorate basic and applied research; as well as multi, intra and trans-disciplinary (MIT) research activities within the CHS in particular and the university as a whole.
To create an innovative platform in which research in the College is enhanced by providing mentoring, role modeling and networking opportunities for developing scholars working in the CHS. In the process the CHS hopes to develop a community of critical researchers across the African continent and the African diaspora.

Several reputable and world class African scholars have been earmarked to participate in the program and ensure its continued success. These scholars provided Unisa academics with facilities and opportunities for intellectual engagement and an infrastructure for imagination that enabled staff within the CHS and the university to reflect and explore new ways of thinking about MIT research and topical issues on Africa in a critical and reflexive manner that engendered new ways of “envisioning possible futures and possible research trajectories” in the humanities and social sciences (Wenger, 1998:238).

Such lectures will continue to be an essential element in the development of a discursive research infrastructure in the CHS which is at the core of a trans-disciplinary mode of knowledge production and dissemination by an African community of practice. The lectures will also continue to be an arena in which African scholars will develop critical theoretical discourses that are oppositional to Eurocentric, apolitical and a historical views about Africa, its people, its challenges and its emerging discourses and knowledge repertoires.

What the CHS has created is a platform for the development of epistemological and ontological conceptual schemas that are rooted first and foremost in African issues to frame MIT research, teaching and academic citizenship that is informed by both local and global discourse practices.

Communication and Marketing Office
Tel: +27 (0) 12 429 6413
E-mail: naiduk@unisa.ac.za

Chairperson: Prof Puleng Segalo
Tel: +27 (0) 12 429 8292
E-mail: segalpj@unisa.ac.za

Last modified: 2023/08/07