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2014
Anticipation. How Individuals and Communities Use the Future
The future is incorporated into all phenomena, conscious or unconscious, physical or ideational, as anticipation, from those forms of anticipation that are observed, for instance, in a tree that loses its leaves in the Autumn to human planning that colonizes the future inspired by imaginary futures.
Basic questions of ethics
Today ethics have to be formulated for pluralistic societies that encompass a variety of religions and worldviews including the secular option.
Future Bodies. Preventing organ trafficking - focusing on consequences and alternatives to organ shortage. A "Health in Transition" Theme Project 2014 -- 2016
Todays society is facing a series of new challenges.
Multiscale Modeling in Tribology
Roughly 30% of global energy consumption today is friction - a colossal loss.
Playing at/against power: Histories of Trauma and Abuse in South African Music-Pedagogical Spaces
This project will focus on a widespread myth, namely that Sweden is a country mainly without corruption and involved internationally in corruption only because of the demands from corrupt governments and people in the rest of the world.
Post-apartheid state engagement with customary structures
This project will contribute to a greater comparative understanding of state-customary knowledge and its challenges in Africa by way of a study of the experience of the post-apartheid State in this regard.
School Photos and their Afterlives: Assimilation, Exclusion, Resistance
Appearing very early in the history of photography and pervasive throughout the world, school-class photos, like report cards and diplomas, confirm group belonging and exposure to a process of educational acculturation and socialization.
Some Thoughts and Reflections about Chemistry in Africa
There is little one can read about the history and the pioneers of chemistry in Africa and even that is mostly written by non-Africans.
The Aesthetics of Violence: Art, Fiction and Film
One can identify an ‘aesthetics’ of violence in any representation of a violent act where form and textuality are essential elements to the experience to the representation.
The Scientific Method in Biology and Biomedicine
Philosophers tend to explain the success of the scientific enterprise in terms of a so-called scientific method believed to be typical of physics and chemistry.
Water Governance in the Face of Global Change: From Understanding to Transforming
The sustainable management of global water resources is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century.
2013
101 Detectives
The main project I undertook at STIAS was a collection of short fictions called 101 Detectives.
A Critical Metals Analysis for South Africa
Modern technology makes use of nearly the entire periodic table of the elements.
African Constitutionalism: Comparative Perspectives
The general focus is on examining critical issues affecting the promotion of constitutionalism in Africa from a comparative perspective.
Being South African: Moving Beyond Race
This project is about South African identity and the key question to be answered would be: what does it mean to be South African as opposed to a white, coloured, African or Indian South African?
Biological Chemistry: Metal transport by proteins
While DNA contains the genetic information, a large number of different proteins are the ‘workhorses’ in living organisms executing the orders given through the DNA code.
Closing the Narrative Loop: Indian and South African Constitutionalism in the Age of Reflexive Globalisation
It is planned to use the time at STIAS to find out whether something like an African type of constitutionalism is developing or whether constitutionalism in Africa develops more or less along the lines of Western constitutionalism.
Conceptafrica
The target and at the same time the tool of the project is the conceptualisations and imaginations of the social and the economic in various African languages.
Conjuring majorities: Life, infrastructure, and relational politics in the urban South
A joint book manuscript ‘Conjuring majorities: life, infrastructure, and relational politics in the urban South’ (with AbdouMaliq Simone) will be completed.
Constitutional protection of economic and social rights in South Africa
This proposal forms part of a larger project on economic and social rights in general, and the right to housing in particular.
Dry Remains – The forensic examination of the moral content of a life
After fifty years of writing plays the forthcoming stay at STIAS will be used to make a second attempt at writing a novel.
Flexibly-bounded Rationality and Marginalisation of Irrationality Theories for Decision Making
In this study the theory of flexibly-bounded rationality which is an extension to the theory of bounded rationality is studied.
From Limited Government to Social Justice and Development: Progressive Constitutionalism in the Era of Globalisation
While Southern countries have largely failed to bring about a new international economic order, they have been more successful in shaping the international agenda in the field of human rights, from the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its recent Protocol.
Historical Novel - Research and Writing
While at STIAS a novel will be researched and written.
How did Homo sapiens become Homo docens? On the evolution of social learning and teaching during the Paleolithic
The purpose of the project is to analyse why teaching has evolved only in the line leading to Homo sapiens.
Infectious causes of human cancers: results and perspectives
During the past decades it became evident that at least 21% of the global cancer incidence is linked to viral, bacterial and parasitic infections.
Is there a future for the project of a clinical anthropology (‘patho-analysis of existence’)
Is it still possible and meaningful, as traditional psychoanalytic theory implies, to understand the relation between psychopathology and (philosophical) anthropology in a positive and structural way?
Legal Traditions and the New Logics
Over the last three centuries western legal thinking has been driven by notions of nation-states, national legal systems and classical forms of logic.
Making up people
Work on the ways in which classifications of people affect the people classified, in particular the ways that individuals think of themselves, and how this affects their actions, and open up or close off possible futures will be continued.
mHealth for Burn Diagnostic and Care in South Africa
In resource-poor settings, poor and marginalised populations have little access to burn injury emergency care, which is crucial to achieve the best possible clinical outcomes.
Multifunctionality in managed grassland systems: Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Grassland systems have been in focus for a long time due to their ecological, socioeconomic and cultural importance.
Nietzsche’s ‘Christian virtues’
Although Nietzsche is admittedly one of the most anti-Christian thinkers in the history of philosophy, this does certainly not mean that Christianity has not left traces in his thinking.
On Our Own
This is a writing project that would examine South African politics in exile and how that had an impact on the relationship of political parties inside the country.
Punishment and Legitimacy: A Kantian Perspective
This project seeks to contribute to our understanding of the moral values that underpin procedural rights in criminal trials, with a particular focus on the sentencing process.
Quantum Chaos in Many-Body Systems
The concept of chaos in classical mechanics is well defined.
Reinstating the "Literary" in South African Literary Studie
South African literary studies has, in a sense, lost its intellectual project.
Revised edition of the book ‘Biochemical Oscillations and Cellular Rhythms’
A second edition of the book (entitled Biochemical Oscillations and Cellular Rhythms.
Social organising and criminal cooperation
This research draws upon a general theoretical interest in organisation outside of organisations paired with an ambition to better understand the formation of criminal organising or cooperation.
South Africa in the Region. Gateway or Gatekeeper?
The main purpose of this project is to analyse South Africa’s Foreign Policy towards its own region and towards Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) on a comparative basis and to discuss its role as a regional-middle-emerging power: Leadership?
South African social policies from a human rights perspective
The apartheid regime of South Africa persistently abstained from ratifying any of the major human rights treaties elaborated under the aegis of the United Nations after 1948.
The cellular and molecular connectome of somatic sensation
The underlying circuitry for somatic sensation remains a mystery.
The Early History of Astronomy at the Cape of Good Hope
The project involves the writing of a major monograph, commissioned by the Brenthurst Press in Johannesburg, on the history of astronomy and navigation at the Cape of Good Hope from the late fifteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century - encompassing times when European expeditions came to the Cape to study the southern sky.
The Effects of Race
The STIAS Effects of Race project project will address major gaps in our knowledge on race thinking and racialism.
The Importance of Being Modern: A Chronicle of Contemporary India
This project involves the writing of a rather particular anthropological history of contemporary India.
The role of international law in the settlement of conflict: Apartheid South Africa, Namibia and Palestine
This study concerns the question whether the manner in which international law informed political consensus in South Africa and Namibia is of relevance to the settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The State of Mathematical Sciences Research and Research Training at South African Universities
This investigation follows up on two reports that appeared in 2008 and 2009.
Towards designing and managing food security in South Africa: a critical analysis of a complex situation
While South Africa is food secure at a national level this is not the case for many households.
Understanding Non-Contractual Obligations: Unjust Enrichment and the Law of Torts in Comparative and Historical Perspective
Whereas the European and South African law of contracts is today seen as normatively integrated part of the law of obligations that can be explained coherently on the basis of an overarching theory or a set of intellectually related principles, the rest of the law of obligations is apparently still understood as resulting from various causes that are normatively independent and difficult to explain.