Projects

Globally, a moral imperative exists to ensure that all children are provided with the resources and environment necessary to enable them to reach their individual potential, and the call for investment to improve the health of children is almost universal.

Michael Blake

The project investigated organized crime around the Atlantic seaboard from an unusual perspective – by tracing the migration of RussoPolish criminals to North and South America and to South Africa between 1881 (after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II) and 1914.

A supernova explosion marks the spectacular end in the life of a massive star.

Josefin Larsson

The nature of the tackle in rugby exposes players to high risk of injury - specifically head injuries and concussions.

Mogammat Sharief Hendricks

In dealing with diversity and difference, many countries have moved from the relatively passive idea of non-discrimination to a more pro-active strategy of affirmative action (AA).

Household food insecurity in rural Southern Africa has its roots in policies that supported large scale commercial farming by white settlers and the creation of spatially separate ‘reserves’ for black households.

Avian malaria and flaviviruses are widely distributed vector-transmitted infections that can affect the fitness of birds and the later can also cause significant human disease.

Mduduzi Ndlovu

With this project I aim to outline the unwritten history of civil aviation in East Africa.

Baz Lecocq

X-ray imaging is a workhorse in the clinic due to its speed, low cost and relative simplicity.

Hans Hertz

Processing food extensively by thermal and nonthermal techniques is a unique and universal human practice.

Why do some individuals or societies transcend a divisive past and why do some remain prisoners of their own past?

The advent of the electronic area has opened new ways to conceptualise and to organise knowledge.

The discipline of Bioinformatics has emerged in the field of molecular and cell biology to deal with the huge amounts of information generated first by genomic and more recently by transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic studies.

Lev Ginzburg

In 2005/2006 the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin hosted an inter-disciplinary research project on secular modernity in which world-renowned Fellows like Hans Joas (German sociologist at the Freiburh Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), professor of the University of Chicago), who led the project, Charles Taylor (Canadian philosopher) and Jose Casanova (sociologist of religion from New York), amongst others, studied the nature of secularisation and the presence and role or religion in different so-called modern societies.

Wolfgang Huber Hans Joas

During this last half century of global expansion in higher education, attention focused on the population of first-generation students: those whose parents had not been to university.

Jennifer Case

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is an aggressive type of blood cancer that requires life-long therapy.

Göran Karlsson

This project seeks to open and explore a liminal space for critique between aesthetics and politics.

George Pavlich Karin van Marle

The growth of global news media presents a fundamental challenge to the theory and practice of media ethics.

The project explores the hypothesis that the eradication of inequalities (especially the alleviation of poverty) in developing regions and especially in Africa is directly dependent on the practice of good governance – not only by governments, but also in the corporate and NGO sectors of society.

Ulf Engel

A growing concern in HIV research is the emergence of drug resistant strains of the virus.

In a current comparative research project the interaction between informational development and human development has been examined in various contexts, including Finland, Silicon Valley, Chile and Taiwan.

Manuel Castells

Ecosystem services and wild resources are worth more than global GDP.

Brian Child

More likely than not, the world will be facing a series of serious crises, connected to climate change, environmental disasters, natural catastrophes, shortage of all kinds of raw materials and sources of mineral energy, as well as new financial crises.

Ulrich Magnus Jaap Spier Guifang Xue Oliver Ruppel

This project consists in writing a monograph about the irreducible and pervasive complexity of the natural world (the biological world, in particular), and about the importance of becoming increasingly aware of this intrinsic complexity, in continuous development and evolution (more so when combined with the artificial worlds recently created by humans), if we are to handle adequately future challenges for science and society.

Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo

Over the past two centuries, the dominant view in social science has been that the modern world shows a pattern of linear development in which all positive trends go upward in more or less linear fashion (albeit perhaps at an uncertain speed), and that therefore over time discrepancies between the leaders and the laggards are overcome, toward a relatively homogenized world.

Traditionally, teachers of reading and writing have assumed texts as monolingual and monomodal.

Developing a (mathematical) model suitable for the integration of the different levels of biological research (sub-molecular, molecular, organisms, populations) in one framework.

The spread of most diseases is strongly affected by the migrations of populations due to wars, natural disasters or prevailing economic circumstances.

Jacek Banasiak

This project entails further refining and developing the technological apparatus necessary for the creation of broad quality digital film media from a mobile source taking into cognizance the specific advantages that such a breakthrough would have for millions of previously disadvantaged South African citizens whose access to the mainframe of the digital grid is extremely limited.

The global prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increasing, with sub-Saharan Africa having the highest projected increase.

Tommy Olsson

Since the publication of his landmark book, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality(1976), Paulin Jidenu Hountondji (1942-2024) has become one of the most important names in modern African philosophy.

Sanya Osha

A study of how Malthus relates to understanding, and resolving, the food-land-population predicaments of sub-Saharan Africa.

As the global population is projected to rise from 8.

Hilde Bras

This project seeks to overcome the (economistic, functionalist) limitations of received understandings of crisis, by drawing on the thought of Karl Polanyi, especially his 1944 work, The Great Transformation.

The South African Constitution contains extensive social and economic rights.

The project explored the relationship between classical gravity and quantum field theories, as well as possible applications of the mathematical structures of string theory to low energy systems such as Quantum Hall Fluids.

The project is concerned with the sustainability of democracy around the globe in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial and economic crisis.

This project has expanded beyond the initial STIAS realm and is the outgrowth of an initiative developed between STIAS and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS), associated with the University of British Columbia.

This play centres on the harsh and challenging world of the itinerant group of sheep shearers in the Karoo who have now virtually disappeared.

Athol Fugard

A critical investigation of post-apartheid life under a transformed legal, political and social order from the perspective of women.

Karin van Marle Frans Viljoen Catherine du Toit

After the initial euphoria surrounding democratic transitions since the 1990’s, what is the present state and future prospects of these young democracies?

Hans-Dieter Klingemann

The advent of the knowledge society has placed the spotlight on the role of experts as gatekeepers and as brokers of knowledge.

Why do we simply fail to establish a more human society in South Africa?

Thad Metz

The abnormal processing of amyloid precursor protein (APP), aggregation of Aβ, Tau hyper phosphorylation and propagation of these abnormally folded proteins have been collectively recognized as hallmarks of the initial, biochemical phase of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) [De Strooper 2016].

Carlos Ibanez

The textile and clothing sector generates a large amount of waste that are either incinerated or disposed in landfills.

Lennart Bergström

Cape Town has a rich and most diverse musical heritage, shaped by all kinds of cosmopolitan influences.

Denis-Constant Martin

When it comes to low probability-high impact (even catastrophic) risk, the judgment of ordinary people, it seems, is not to be trusted.

Identity is a term much used yet hard to define.