Past Initiatives

While much of the work of STIAS Fellows occur within the tranquil, enriching and stimulating environment that an institute for advanced study provides (and moreover, in the attractive environments of the Mostertsdrift estate and its surroundings), STIAS has from the outset endeavoured to bring the work of leading scholars and scientists to a larger public.

Since the inception of the Fellowship programme, STIAS has hosted a series of public lectures by STIAS Fellows on the Stellenbosch University campus. Presenting three to four lectures per semester, the series has offered an opportunity to academics, researchers and students at Stellenbosch University and other universities in the Western Cape, as well as members of the public, to learn more about the work of STIAS fellows and associates.

The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 motivated the launch of a new webinar series of lectures. Drawing on the work of STIAS fellows over a period of more than a decade, STIAS has been able to invite leading voices from around the world to reflect on the times we are living in from different perspectives.

A future invited annual lecture series is being planned.

Find an overview of STIAS lectures to date below, with links to the lecture announcements and reports where available.

As part of its mandate to serve a broader national, African and global research community STIAS has over time hosted several series of annual seminars, roundtables and conferences. These have presented an opportunity to explore new areas of investigation, often resulting in longer-term themes and projects by STIAS fellows.

They have also provided an opportunity for STIAS to engage a broader set of stakeholders in the public and private spheres around key discussion areas. The interface between scholarship of the highest level and its implementation in real world contexts is key to the STIAS objectives.

STIAS continues to initiate and present a platform for exploration of critical areas of research and their articulation in planning and policy and welcomes topical or thematic suggestions from scholars and policymakers.

By providing a space that strives to remain free from sectional interests, and that is experienced as a neutral platform for honest exploration and discussion by partners that may elsewhere find themselves in competing positions, cooperation across borders in service of science at the highest level becomes actualised.

Wallenberg Roundtables

The STIAS-Wallenberg roundtables ran from 2013 to 2017, providing a forum for researchers and experts to interact with different sectors of society around topics of common concern, supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

A series of seminars jointly organised by STIAS and the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (ICLA), bringing together legal practitioners, judges, scholars, and researchers to promote constitutionalism in Africa.

Until 2020, STIAS supported a number of longer term theme projects within its programme, primarily funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. As all other STIAS projects these projects were fellow-driven, i.e. through work primarily done at STIAS by invited fellows who are resident at the Institute for varying periods of time. While the STIAS programme no longer provides dedicated support to long term theme projects, these earlier seven themes remain accessible on our website for reference and reporting. The themes and the questions that they address remain of relevance to the STIAS programme and proposals, while in no way limited by them, may refer to these historical themes where a clear connection may be made.