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2025
A new evolutionary perspective on the nature of the individual
A book entitled Evolutionary Perspectives on Pregnancy(with Columbia University Press) will be completed and published.
All too real: race thinking and thinking about race in post-1994 South Africa
The project is to work towards completion of a book under the working title of ‘All too real: race thinking and thinking about race in South Africa’.
An Evolutionary Cybernetic Theory of Semiosis
In recent years, particularly in the emerging field of biosemiotics, it has been proposed that semiotics - the study of signification processes - could bring a paradigmatic shift in our scientific conception of life, and consequently in scientific biology in general and beyond.
Approaching Human-Environment System (HES) based transdisciplinary processes: The case of Global Transdisciplinary Processes for Sustainable Phosphorus Management
Humankind is facing a new age, i.
Are Trout South African? Or: A Postcolonial Fish
There has been substantial attention paid in literary and postcolonial studies to issues of environment and ecology, and especially the environmental transformations which colonial and imperial histories have wrought upon the (post)colony.
Assessing current use and future potential of legumes and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in Africa
The Agricultural Green Revolution of the 20th century, which resulted from plant breeding and increased fertilizer use, led to food sufficiency and security in many parts of the world.
Balancing social welfare and private maintenance: the alleviation of poverty in South Africa
South African (family) lawyers continue to focus on the private maintenance obligation as the primary instrument for alleviating poverty.
Beyond Extraversion: Ways towards Intellectual Self-reliance
Most publications by philosophers, scientists and other scholars from Africa and the Third World have so far been intended for an external audience and particularly a Western audience.
Biological Laws: Analogies and Allometries
The question of whether there are laws in ecology is important.
Developing a hypothesis on the “domestication syndrome” of animals
The domestication of many animal species was a key element in the development of human societies.
Double Vision
This project will be a work of creative non-fiction, exploring issues of identity, boundaries, and vision that have been of concern for many years to a scholar who has been both literary critic and biographer.
Ecological and non-ecological speciation mechanisms
During the past decade, there has been a lot of interest among evolutionary biologists in ecological niche-based) speciation processes, under the scientific umbrella of The ecological theory of adaptive radiations.
Ecological elimination as a major evolutionary force
Populations fluctuate but seem generally stable in the long run.
Emerging Legal Geographies of Cultural Rights
This project explores the intensification of interest in culture as the basis for new forms of development and the assertion of new rights.
Food security in sub-Saharan Africa from the production, human and environmental safety standpoints
Africa, once considered the breadbasket of the world, is now highly dependent on food imports.
Gandhi’s Printing Press: Global Trajectories of Print Culture in the Indian Ocean
During his South African years (1893-1914), Mohandas Gandhi began fashioning his world-changing ideas on satyagraha/‘passive resistance’.
Global Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – Challenges and Opportunities
This project has the aim to complete and finalize a large global initiative in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity (SCBD).
Health care interactions in multicultural societies
Communication has been identified as the single biggest barrier to health care and the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate services is a top priority, particularly in light of the illness burden imposed by diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
History wars and Indigenous Rights
Indigenous rights claims remain a central, unresolved human rights issue in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.
Human skin pigmentation: Further studies of its evolution, biological consequences, and social meaning
Recent research on the topic explored the effects of skin pigmentation on human health and social well-being, and upcoming projects will focus on these aims.
Information and Codes in Biochemistry
Biochemists traditionally accept the view that life is an extremely complex form of chemistry (the Chemical paradigm), a view which implies that genetic information and the genetic code are but metaphorical concepts because they cannot be described by physical quantities.
Institutional Innovations and Investments: Creating an Enabling Environment for Emerging Agro-Enterprises in Africa
Agro-enterprises make important contributions to employment and income generation in developing countries, occupying a strategic position in manufacturing that comprise an essential supply-source of food and fiber production and represent an important demand-driver for agricultural products.
Inter-contextual hermeneutics: interpreting the bible in its social-historical and contemporary contexts
The contemporary western academic modes of reading the bible which focus on the history of the text or the text itself, and serve western interests and goals are inadequate for addressing questions and issues from African contexts.
Interpreting the life of Chief Albert Luthuli
This is a study of the legacies and meanings of Chief Luthuli’s life in history and today.
Islands of Work at the Rough Edge of the World; and: Archiving Culture and Nature: Harlan I. Smith’s Ethnographic Record of the Pacific Slope
Two book-length studies will be completed.
J.M. Coetzee: A Critical Biography
The Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee is currently South Africa’s most resourceful and influential writer.
Jurisprudence of the SA constitutional court – a comparative study
The project will analyse three factors in play: a national project of post-colonial recovery from distributive injustice, prominently including land reform; express constitutional protection for property rights; and a constitution whose other main features bring it recognisably within the broad historical tradition of liberal constitutionalism.
Macrophages in Human Tissues-Phenotypic Diversity in Health and Disease
Macrophages represent a heterogeneous family of white blood cells which are widely distributed throughout the body.
Mobile telephony and acute injury care
In the context of a collaboration between Stellenbosch University (SUN) and Karolinska Institutet (KI) the project aims to facilitate the diagnosis and care of burns patients in resource poor areas, building on modern information communication technologies like camera phones.
Moments of awakening: Apartheid and the making of a psychologist
Moments of Awakening, is the last project that will bring to completion the trilogy of life writing projects initiated in 2005.
Money from nothing: popular economies and indebtedness in South Africa
This project explores the over-indebtedness of South African consumers, set against the longer history of exploitation of South African black people by the forces of capitalism, and interrogates how these currently manifest themselves in an allegedly ‘neoliberal’ social order.
Private lands conservation in law and culture
Many ecological conservation goals require the use of legal means to channel land development and otherwise curtail unsound uses of privately owned lands.
Psychology, neoliberalism and changing subjectivities in Southern and Eastern Africa
Recent scholarship on the ‘postcolonial subject’ in Africa and beyond posits a link between neoliberalism and the evolution of new subjectivities.
Regime shifts in social-ecological systems: impacts on ecosystem services and implications for poverty alleviation
Regime shifts refer to large, persistent changes in the structure and function of complex systems such as intertwined social-ecological systems (SES).
Reparations for Victims of Apartheid
In spite of the increasing recognition in international law of the need for reparations for victims of serious human rights violations, the overwhelming majority of victims of Apartheid has not been compensated by the South African government and has not had access to legal avenues for the payment of such reparations.
Socioecononomic health inequalities: measurement, explanation and policy evaluation
The main purpose of this project is to identify and quantify the major causal mechanisms that drive the changes in socioeconomic health inequalities in Sweden.
Technological knowledge: A new structure
The purpose of this project is to help energize the innovation chain — the sequence of events that leads from scientific discovery, to technological progress and on to practical application.
The African Union’s emerging policy on unconstitutional changes of government
This research project is on unconstitutional changes of government (UCG).
The evolutionary history of the human face, a multi-disciplinary detective story
Like all complex animals, humans have faces.
The Pitfalls of Reductionism in Vaccine Research
Reductionism has been the predominant research strategy of molecular and structural biology in the 20th century.
The Politics of Judicial Review in South Africa
South Africa’s turn to liberal constitutionalism has attracted wide interest from comparative politics scholars.
The role of inhibitory and disinhibitory processes in the brain in the formation of esthetic judgement
Scholars in the humanities continue to resist the possible applications of the cognitive neurosciences to the understanding of cultural phenomena.
The work of culture in an age of informational capital
The major project is to outline and pursue further research on the forthcoming book, titled ‘Intellectual Property and its Publics: The Work of Culture in an Era of Informational Capital’ which explores new pressures and tendencies to treat culture as a resource and the growing propensity to claim rights on cultural grounds under neoliberal capitalism.
Tightening the Consistency of Quantum Bayesianism
Quantum Bayesianism is an effort to interpret all the probabilities arising in quantum theory (our most accurate physical theory to date, the one ultimately responsible for almost all of modern technology) in terms of the Bayesian conception of probability – that probabilities quantify subjective degrees of belief, rather than objective features of nature.
Towards understanding the dilemma of Food Security in the rural areas of South Africa
Although South Africa is food secure on a country level, large numbers of households within the country remain food insecure.
Uses of Literature
The value of literature is minimised in the functioning of society.
When solar current is cheap, plentiful and lasts all night through…what then of coming energy systems in Africa?
Organic photovoltaic systems now give more than 10% conversion efficiency from sunlight.
Xenophobia, Migrancy and Multiculturalism
Different causes and expressions of xenophobia are analysed by comparing three countries: South Africa, Germany and Canada.