In alignment with the University’s mission to provide “a transformative student experience, networked and collaborative teaching and learning, purposeful partnership and inclusive networks”,
the PhD in Sustainable Development first and foremost seeks to develop powerful African knowers who can address pressing socio-technical and social-ecological challenges at scales from local to global. Our programme takes seriously the structural challenges faced by future African academic leaders (particularly within the context of Stellenbosch University and its unique transformational challenges), whilst:
- Training PhD students to be competitive for a job in industry or trained to be competitive for applying to academic jobs; both locally and internationally.
- Offering a globally ground-breaking Sustainable Development programme in an African context.
- Offering international experience and exposure, in both the Global North and South.
- Capacitating powerful knowers and leaders that can navigate global societal challenges in the Anthropocene; powerful leaders from the Global South, drawing on their full African identities.
We offer a 4 year full-time research-intensive programme, embedded in both theory and practice, to capacitate students towards leadership in addressing sustainability challenges, with purposeful transformative student development. The programme will comprise four key elements:
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Thesis by publication, supported by trans/interdisciplinary training, deep supervision, and mentorship.
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Coursework as a supportive element.
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Support for professional development.
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Networks at multiple scales.
The CST is a vibrant, creative, and energetic community in a mesh of hubs, projects and generous learning spaces rooted in South Africa. We grow our reach through interconnectedness of resources and communities. We respect and revere the depth and breadth of knowledge engagement and its production, giving the requisite time and space for thinking, reflection, and debate to build understanding and question and disrupt accepted norms. llenges, with purposeful transformative student development. The programme will comprise four key elements:
Our honouring of diverse people, relationships, and a sense of the interconnectedness and complexity of the world, along with the real joy of collaboration and learning drives our critical, engaged scholarship as a powerhouse of rigorous intellectual thinking and teaching, resulting in being a globally recognised school of thought, creating influence and meaningful impact that creates the change we want to see in the world as we inspire the spark in our students and address challenges beyond academics, for justice, social and ecological transformation.
