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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.
A Season of Prosperity (working title)
This novel will blend a sequence of narratives, set at various turning points in the history of the British Virgin Islands from 1807 To present day, concerned with the themes of body and work, individual and collective identity, and the intersections of trauma and Virgin Islander identity.
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.
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.
Assistance to Visual Impairing People using Deep Learning and Type-2 Fuzzy Logic
Blind or visually impaired people (BVIP) are increasingly encountering difficulties in their daily lives.
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.
Biological Laws: Analogies and Allometries
The question of whether there are laws in ecology is important.
Complex microbial communities: application of supply-demand principles to advance the science from describing diversity to explaining diversity
This project will involve collaboration with Jannie Hofmeyr (SU) on, amongst others the principles of supply and demand as driving force of metabolic activity, and incorporating them: 1) into existing experimental data sets to explore adaptive behavior amongst bacteria as a basis for the maintenance of microbial community function in environmental processes, and 2) a state-of-science review related to microbiological considerations for repository engineering and long-term safety of deep geological repositories of nuclear waste, as well as formulating recommendations for the way forward to predict the potential impact of microbial activity on the stability of these repositories.
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).
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.
Identity and Belonging: Teenage Parenthood in Kampala’s Informal Settlements
Informal settlements (slums) are rapidly growing in the developing world.
Imitators and Innovators: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851-1921
Although African economic history is enjoying a renaissance, the branch of the subject represented by business remains relatively neglected.
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.
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.
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.
Nelson Mandela – About Tolerance and Leadership (a biography)
The project will involve the final editing and fine-tuning of the main body of the book Nelson Mandela – Tolerance and Leadership.
Piety versus Orthodoxy
This project explores the relationship between two very different types of theology that have characterized theological thinking in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa during the past 150 years: mystical theology reflecting on the assumptions underlying the personal piety of believers and confessionalism aimed at defending orthodox doctrine.
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.
Quantum and collective phenomena induced by PT-symmetry in opto-electromechanical array
Parity-time (PT) symmetry has attracted a lot of attention in many fields of physics in recent years.
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.
Restructuring settlements towards a healed future: The case of the Adam Tas Corridor initiative in Stellenbosch
Cities and larger towns are increasingly home to the majority of people, globally and in South Africa.
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 Boxing Economy of the Eastern Cape
What is the link between the national formal economy on the one hand, and on the other, local community based economic and leisure cultures, which may have been largely self-sustaining but interminably precarious?
The Changing Place of the Corporation in International Law (Crossing Borders: Boundaries and Legal Authority in a Global Context)
This is a team project within the Crossing Borders theme.
The evolutionary history of the human face, a multi-disciplinary detective story
Like all complex animals, humans have faces.
The politics of dress, gender and sexuality in Malawian popular art
This proposed study, which is an extension of my current research, sets out to examine the representations of the chitenje (a wrap-around cloth) in Malawian popular arts, as a site for examining how questions of gender, sexuality, class, and national belonging are negotiated.
The State versus Neville Alexander and ten others: The causes and consequences of a political trial
This book project concerns the 1963-64 trial of Neville Alexander and ten other members of the National Liberation Front (NLF).
The Truth About Crime
Many African postcolonies are haunted by the spectre of: the waning efficacy of law enforcement, the ambiguity of authority, and the apparent abandonment of subjects by the state.
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.
Theory from the South
‘The Global South’ is rarely seen as a source of explanation for world historical events.
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.
Understanding Emergence
Emergent behaviour seems to be characteristic of the `complex systems that currently feature in Mathematics, Computer Science, the Physical Sciences and Philosophy.
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.
Wine, Temperance and South African Connectivity c.1900 to the Present
Although wine is often conceived of within bounded national histories, it is a commodity that is best understood within a global framework – especially since the transformations necessitated by the spread of phylloxera in the later nineteenth century.
Women in mining frontiers in Africa: Exploring the diverse ways in which women’s lived experiences and livelihoods around sites of extraction are affected by mines
Scholarship on mining frontiers tends to be masculine in focus, covering topic such as the centrality of resource extraction in the colonial and post-colonial projects.