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2016
“Brighter Futures” through Health Promotion and Health Equity
There is robust evidence that health promotion in the school setting can increase children’s knowledge and change their choice of health related behaviors for the better.
“Sustainable Cities in South Africa: A Legal Appraisal”
The 11th of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals adopted on 25 September 2015 (the new sustainable development agenda), focuses on the pursuit of cities that are inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
“We Don’t Need Another Hero”
In a 2008, post-Polokwane missive to ANC president, Jacob Zuma, declaring his refusal to campaign for the African National Congress (ANC) in the upcoming 2009 general election, recently-deposed South African President Thabo Mbeki famously declared:… I find it strange in the extreme that today cadres of our movement attach the label of a cult of personality to me, and indeed publicly declare a determination to kill to defend your own cause, the personal interests of the personality, Jacob Zuma!
Assessing the potential impact of agriculture on the biogeochemistry of a pristine wetland, the Okavango Delta
The Okavango Delta, Botswana is a World Heritage Site and an international treasure.
Biotechnology and Legal Regulation: Personal Freedom, Risk Management and Human Dignity
The regulation of biotechnology is determined by a number of often conflicting legal values and social-economic interests.
Cannon’s cats and Freud’s dream metaphor insight carry the keys to much human thought (and action)
Sigmund Freud in 1899, reported that the dream metaphor often provides the key to understanding the psychological origin of emotional distress (‘neurosis’), and Walter Cannon in 1915 elucidated the body’s response to emotional stress in cats, called the ‘fight or flight response’.
Christianity, modernity and the politics of homosexuality in Africa
This project examines the complexity and multiplicity of Christian contributions to politics of homosexuality and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights in Africa.
Commemorating Painful Pasts through Performative Practices
The 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have left a dark legacy behind: world wars, genocides, civil wars, dictatorships and terrorist attacks with millions of people tortured, persecuted, displaced, dead, or disappeared without a trace.
Complexity and Anticipation
Complexity is possibly the most relevant scientific idea that emerged during the past decades.
Complexity and emergent properties in the spider’s webs and silks
Spider webs are superb examples of functional structures that emerge as the animal builds her web.
Constitution-building in Africa: Decentralisation and constitutionalism in Africa
Under the broad theme of constitution-building in Africa, the focus of this project will be on the issue of decentralisation and constitutionalism in Africa.
Critical Illegibility, Blackness and Scoring Dangerous Freedoms
My project examines the possibility of reconfiguring conventional literary analytic practice by crafting critical approaches which are less invested in rendering texts ‘transparent’ than in approximating, embracing and extending the transgressive energies and insights of creative texts.
Dangerous Denial: An Exploration of Major Endocrine Disruptors
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormonal system, adversely affecting reproduction, neurology and immunology in humans and animals.
Differentiated Access: Water, Citizenship and Politics
Global water policy highlights the need to extend affordable and safe water to underserved communities, in addition to fostering participatory water governance.
Fiction Writing Project
I plan to write a novel based on the life and works of Thomas Pringle, popularly known as the Father of South African poetry.
Infectious Disease Prevention in Companion Animals
The project aims at campaigning for the acceptance of companion animal vaccination and its disease prevention aspects, thereby increasing the visibility of veterinary research in the One Medicine-One Health perspective.
Japanese firms, industrial systems and investments in Africa
It is well recognised that there is growing economic and political interaction between sub-Saharan Africa and states from the East Asian region.
Low cost nudges to patients to improve treatment adherence: do they work?
Universal health coverage and the growing burden of chronic illness are both at the top of the global health agenda.
Making primary health care work for the poor
South Africa’s poor health outcomes have traditionally been attributed to poverty, unequal and ineffective spending and the high disease burden, but increasingly it is recognized that the public health system may also be contributing to such problems by delivering services that do not always conform to the stipulated standards.
Many Modernities ‐ Religious freedom in South Africa and Sweden
In Europe with a history of religious wars and big national churches, freedom of religion is often understood as freedom from, at least from institutional religion.
Mobilizing for Natural Resource Management at the Micro-level in Rural Africa
Natural resource management (NRM) involves efforts by different institutions to formulate and implement laws, policies and legislation to ensure viable use of natural resources.
Noiseless optical amplifiers and their applications
Optical amplifiers are essential in optical communication systems that serve as the backbone of the Internet.
Nutritional Security in a Profitable and Sustainable Food System
The South African Food system is designed to ensure that the country’s population is well-nourished, that farming is a viable livelihood and that the environment is protected.
Opposition in African Politics: The Case of Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya
This research examines the idea of opposition in African politics against the backdrop of problems inherent in the democratization process in contemporary Africa with a view to analyzing their dimensions and implications for the development of the continent and her peoples.
Promoting peace, security and development in Africa: challenges, and constraints to South Africa’s African Agenda
The purpose of this research project is to (further) explore aspects of South Africa’s African policy over the past two decades, specifically within the frameworks of its African Agenda and its white paper on foreign policy, The Diplomacy of Ubuntu.
Rethinking Sex in Uganda’s Parliament
How do parliaments think about sexualities, sexual citizenship, sexual rights and sexual norms over time and space within the African continent?
Science and development: Growth, expansion and role of university systems in emerging economies
The challenge of economic growth for middle income countries includes technological upgrading, which, in turn, demands expansion and improvement of the higher education and science system.
South Africa and the emergence of international human rights
Time at STIAS will be devoted to the final updating and revision of a syllabus entitled The International Protection of Human Rights: A Critical Approach, which was used in 2015 at the College of Law of the National University of Taiwan in Taipei, to be published as a book in 2016 by Intersentia (Antwerp, Cambridge, Portland).
Swedish Naturalists in South Africa 1771–1851
The South African flora and fauna have been studied by a number of Swedish naturalists the last 250 years.
The “As-If” reality of puppet theatre
While at STIAS Jane Taylor will be launching creative/intellectual projects involving object theatre and puppetry arts.
The Heartbeat of a Storm
After writing five novels, a collection of short stories and a musical, which largely drew from South Africas troubled past, I will use the period at STIAS to write a semi-autobiographical (or novelized) account of the use of technology or forensic science to make sense of our past and of our future.
The legitimacy and authority of international criminal law
This project is part of a longer-term research agenda, which interrogates the legitimacy and authority of international criminal law.
The right to have rights: from migration to integration
One of the key tasks of my stay at STIAS will be to work on a project that addresses the normative and institutional basis of what Hannah Arendt calls the right to have rights.
The role of natural selection in the origin of species
The splitting of one biological species into two, speciation, is a central process in evolutionary biology.
Transcultural Affinity: Cosmopolitan Imagination in South Africa
My project examines the idea of cosmopolitan solidarity in South Africa.
Transitional Justice: Accountability for wrongdoing in the aftermath of conflict
Alternative methods of justice, such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and amnesties, have been used in the aftermath of several conflicts, including in the wake of Apartheid.
What Keeps Society Together? Societal Cohesion, South Africa as a Challenging Case.
My overall research interest is about societal cohesion, what keeps a society together.
2015
Contingency and Uncertainty: Working with and against the state in South Africa
This project asks the question: under what circumstances, with what political resources, and under what kinds of assumptions are women able to make claims on the state to address gender inequalities?
Innovations: Key to structural change and prosperity
One of the key activities during my stay at STIAS is, together with Margareta Norell Bergendahl, to finalize the agenda of the up-coming Round Table meeting to be held at STIAS in February 2016.
Multilingual ecologies
Languages change and adapt as they exist in the minds and practices of multilinguals.
Mutual innovation capacity building
One of the key assignments for my stay at STIAS will be to work out a proposal for the final agenda and format for a Round Table (RT) meeting to be held at STIAS in February 2016 together with Pontus Braunerhjelm.
New approaches to anti-obesity therapeutics
Obesity is a medical condition defined as the excessive accumulation of fat that presents a risk to health.
Property – Obstacle or Key to Success for South Africa's Constitutional Democracy?
The inclusion of a clause protecting the deprivation of property in South Africa’s Constitution was controversial.
Sisters-in-Law: Scotland, South-Africa, and the Law of Property
Perched, inconveniently, at opposite ends of the globe, Scotland and South Africa are nonetheless ‘sisters-in-law’ in the sense that their systems of private law are uncannily close.
The Politics of the Human
To think of oneself primarily as a human being is to discount, in some way, the significance of the divisions we otherwise maintain between people.
The Theory and Practice of Social Transformation through the Arts (Being Human Today theme)
The world over and across time, the arts remain vitally important in fostering resilience and creating channels for reconciliation after conflict.
Understanding clinical quality of care in public primary health care facilities in South Africa
This study considers the reliability of a standardised client approach to inform policy makers about the quality of the clinical encounter at primary healthcare centres in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape metro areas.