We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience, serve personalized ads or content, and analyze our traffic. By clicking "Accept All", you consent to our use of cookies. Read more in our Privacy Policy.
2016
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.
Complexity and Anticipation
Complexity is possibly the most relevant scientific idea that emerged during the past decades.
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.
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).
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 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.
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.
2015
A comparative study of donor and state policies and operational approaches to addressing forced displacement due to armed conflict in the Horn of Africa
The global population of forcibly displaced persons due to armed conflict is about 44 million, comprising about 15.
A convergence of interest between expressivism and pragmatism
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in pragmatism, both historically and in its contemporary form, particularly as it has developed through the work of Bob Brandom, Huw Price, Michael Williams and others.
Acting on Stage
Role-playing on stage, e.g. an actor playing Shakespeare’s Richard III, clearly differs from role-playing in real life, e.
African Constitutionalism: Comparative Perspectives (2)
The main project that I have engaged in at STIAS since 2013 falls under the general theme, African Constitutionalism: Comparative Perspectives.
Analysing sub-Saharan African states through a limited access lens
During the past decade, an extraordinary disconnect regarding the futures of states in sub-Saharan Africa has emerged: ‘Aspiring Africa, the world’s fastest growing continent’ (in the words of The Economist on its title page), on the one hand, and, in the words of an economist, ‘informalised and subsistence Africa, with swathes of survivalist pockets of existence, remains the overriding economic reality’ in these states, on the other.
Battling homophobia in the bid to protect East Africa's sexual minorities: A socio-legal analysis
Recent political and judicial battles over the rights of sexual minorities in East Africa have witnessed the introduction of new constricting legislation, judicial interventions and civil society action both in favour and against the expansion of the ‘right to love.
Cape Town’s Creole Songs, Nederlandsliedjies and moppies
Following up on the publication of Sounding the Cape, Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa ( African Minds, Somerset West, 2013) researched and published with support by STIAS, this project will focus on two song repertoires emblematic of Cape Town’s music: the Moppies (or comic songs) and the Nederlandslierdjies.
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?
Deeply equitable development: water provision and biodiversity offsetting in South Africa
Fulfilling human rights to a clean and healthy environment while sustaining that environment for present and future generations of humans and non-humans is unambiguously worthwhile until a nation tries to achieve these goals simultaneously.
Democracy at the Crossroads? Normative, performance and legitimacy changes in contemporary democracies
Current crises can hardly be reduced to fiscal or economic phenomena; they seem to be much deeper, including the crisis of democracy per se.
Dichotomies in biology and the origin of life problem
Advances in synthetic biology have brought the long-standing ‘Origin of Life’ problem once again into prominence.
Fiction and Reality of Mobility in Africa
The aim of this project is to explore how to marry ethnography and fiction in understanding the intricacies, nuance and complexity of African mobility and mobile Africans as frontier beings.
HIV prevention and treatment: from policy to implementation
During my residency at STIAS I will be analyzing data and completing two scientific papers on HIV prevention, in particular the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in Kenya and Tanzania where I have ongoing projects and data is being collected.
In Pursuit of a Global Civics
We are the luckiest generation in human history.
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.
Labour after Globalisation: new forms of organisation, new sources of power
In this book-length manuscript a puzzle will be dealt with, namely: the continuing decline of traditional trade unionism in advanced industrial countries, side by side with the growth of a new scholarship on global labour.
Learning a sign language: the challenge of modality
The study of sign languages contributes to our understanding of the human language faculty.
Modernity and Modernism in Everyday Life – South Africa and Australia in the Twentieth Century
How do we live? How does our immediate infrastructure work, as house, and home?
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.
On Social Meaning – Ernst Cassirer, Cornelius Castoriadis and Philosophical-Rhetorical Anthropology
In rhetorical theory, the question of how meaning is produced has traditionally been dealt with in terms of the intentions of the orator to influence her or his audience through speech.
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.
Science in South Africa – a synoptic history
The history of science and of scientific knowledge in South Africa is a growing field of interest but it remains relatively fragmented.
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.
South African – Swedish effort on pre-hospital diagnostics of stroke and traumatic injuries
Stroke care represents one of the major global unmet challenges of the global health care system.
South African Literature after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The role of literature is always to speak the truth to power (Nietzsche), and even if it cannot pretend to ameliorate material problems it appears to have impact on the way readers respond to reality and even perhaps behave in the real world.
Systems biology studies on plant desiccation tolerance for food security
Drought is the single greatest threat to world agriculture (FAO, 2008) and this is predicted to be increasingly exacerbated by the effects of global climate change.
The bioarchaeology of South Africa
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 modern practice of intervention by invitation and its implications for the prohibition of the use of force
The research examines how the criteria for permissible military intervention by invitation as developed in international law doctrine are currently implemented by States, as well as how this impacts the prohibition of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of States.
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.
The transition to Green Economy: Africa’s leapfrogging opportunity
Africa is currently recognized as the fastest growing region in the world while a number of African countries are listed amongst the fastest growing economies in the region over the last decade.
The work and legacy of Sesotho writer Thomas Mofolo
Dunton and Krog are to edit for peer review and publication a set of papers delivered at a conference held in Lesotho on the work of Sesotho writer Thomas Mofolo.
Toward reducing infant mortality via smart and low-cost pulse oximetry
Sepsis kills over six million children in the developing world every year, many of those die at home and thus it is believed that a distributed, community‐based intervention would be most effective in reducing mortality.
Traditional leadership, democracy and development in the rural eastern Cape: a study of futures past
The problem of how to marry constitutional democracy with traditional authorities in the postcolonial context is not unique to South Africa and has been substantially explored in other contexts.
Ubuntu commercial nests in African indigenous markets in Nairobi: alternative business model for an emerging ‘African metropolis’
This research proposes that there is an ‘African metropolis’ that has been struggling for space and ascendancy in the City of Nairobi.
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.
Understanding Southern welfare – social policies in Brazil, India, China and South Africa
A mid-term research programme focusing on the ideational foundations of social policies beyond traditional Northern welfare will be fleshed out.
Writing Across Borders – In Praise of Impurity
The idea of combining and possibly merging ‘ethnography’ and ‘fiction’ emanates from my research on literature’s role in the transition processes of South Africa and Argentina (Fiction and Truth in Transition : Writing the present past in South Africa and Argentina,2012), which brought me in the end, to my own surprise, to the crossroads of Literature and Anthropology.