What does transformation mean in higher education and for South Africa's higher education system, and for the wider South African society? Who defines, evaluates, and measures institutional transformation? And how has knowledge in the human sciences in South Africa responded to the racialised histories of their formation, 22 years into post-apartheid democracy?
These questions are central to a new research and postgraduate education project undertaken by a team of researchers in Stellenbosch University's (SU) Department of Sociology & Social Anthropology. This project, entitled Indexing Transformation, has been made possible by a five-year grant of R11,2 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is set to kick off in 2017.
The Mellon Foundation grant will support a part-time program manager, research projects, 78 graduate student scholarships, an international conference on institutional transformation in 2017 that will set agendas and identify challenges for the study of transformation, an annual workshop of faculty and graduate students working on transformation issues, a weekly seminar series, and a website.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a valuable supporter of SU. Earlier this year, the Foundation awarded R13.7m to Prof Stephanus Muller's Delinking Encounters Initiative – a five-year project of Africa Open, a Centre of Excellence in the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty as well as R5.3m over three years towards a supra-institutional initiative that aims to advance black South Africans into the ranks of associate professors and full professors within the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
"The Arts and Social Sciences Faculty is grateful for the continued support and trust that the Mellon Foundation has placed in our Faculty," said Faculty Dean, Prof Anthony Leysens. "The financial support not only makes a significant and much-needed contribution to the promotion of diversity and transformation in our Faculty and at our institution, but also contributes to the development of high-level expertise on the African continent," he added.
"We are pleased to be associated with Stellenbosch University, as one of the leading research universities in Africa," said Dr Saleem Badat, Program Director: International Higher Education & Strategic Projects, at the Mellon Foundation. He added that "the Foundation's partnership with Stellenbosch sought to strengthen and promote the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies, and to support high quality programs oriented to producing new knowledge, and building new generations of intellectuals scholars, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds."
According to project leader Prof Steven Robins, the Indexing Transformation project follows directly from the Mellon-funded Indexing the Human project that successfully ran a seminar series and developed a dynamic research space in the Department between July 2014 and October 2015.
"Indexing the Human succeeded in catalysing critical reflection on the history of the human sciences in Stellenbosch, and in South Africa more generally. Our current project emerges out of this on-going concern with the nature of knowledge production in the human sciences. It is also the outcome of the recognition that our university spaces and intellectual work require serious examination in relation to persistent racial inequalities and obstacles to democratic, inclusive intellectual practice, a recognition amplified by recent student protests across South Africa," Prof Robins said.
This new project will comprise the development of research clusters, the introduction of a coursework Masters focusing on the theme of Critical Transformation Studies and a seminar series. Through these interventions, the research team will aim to develop Indexing Transformation into an intellectual space for scholars and graduate students to interrogate the diverse dimensions of transformation.
Photo: Prof Steven Robins.
