19 prestigious 2021 SSRC Fellow Lecture in November entitled Universities and intellectual life in the age of populism; the virtual 15th Biennial Conference South Africa Association of Political Science, on ‘Rethinking politics in the time of crisis’, (Rhodes University August, 2021); and a colloquium on ‘The politics of knowledge production in African studies’ at UCT’s Centre For African Studies in late September/early October. We hope and anticipate that Cecilia will soon be able to secure a permeant position at UJ, which will allow her to further develop her very promising research profile and allow ADS to develop the regional political component to Development Studies which her work, uniquely offers. Mary Galvin was the lead organiser (with UCT, Wits and UUWC) in an initiative called Solve Climate 2030, involving 100 universities in 55 countries, and in a webinar on a Just Transition and Climate Action considering the issue ‘Why are Our Taps Dry?’. Galvin also presented in a webinar organised by the Wilson Centre and various local radio shows. During the first half of the year Suzall Timm was collaborator on the DSI/NRF/CSIR Chair in Waste and Society Webinar Series (February – June 2021), as well as participating in the Humanities Qualitative Research Festival in July, where she presented on ‘Ethnography as an entanglement’, in a panel on Ethnography and Indigenous Methodologies. Timm also acted as the ‘big events coordinator’ in the Faculty of Humanities Research Committee, as part of the organising team for webinar series: Humanities Distinguished 4IR Webinar Series. As well as presenting a paper entitled “Regulating waste pickers in South Africa: ‘Skarrel is ‘n wet’ “ at one of the SADS seminar events in Term 3 (‘The end(s) of development’ Moore), Timm facilitated a conference session on Waste and Recycling: building a zero waste consciousness and movement at the International Conference: Climate, extractivism, Covid-recovery and the Just Transition in November. The department’s own seminars series - SADS in terms 2 (organised by Mayekiso) and 3 (by Moore), the Gauteng Anthropology group (ably administered by Qambela in 2021) and our now well established weekly postgraduate seminars (Timm & Gastrow) have all been a great success, with great speakers and papers, critical discussions, and consistent attendance. The Gauteng Anthropology group in particular has made significant waves through social media, with hundreds of people attending events, thousands cumulatively watching on YouTube and over a half a million ‘Impressions’ on Twitter. Gauteng Anthropology has over a thousand followers across its platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter). The anthropology term of the SADS seminars (term 2) was organised by Andile Mayekiso in 2021, and included a wonderful series of papers on subjects as diverse as: Sexuality and AmaXhosa women’s agency: South African indigenous women’s agency in sexual matters (by Mayekiso himself); South African Child Gauge 2020: Shedding light on the slow violence of malnutrition (by Lori Lake, UCT) ; Wine and Cultural Heritage: A Research Idea in Search of a Fruitful Comparison (by Professor Paul Nugent, Edinburgh and incoming Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg); Locomotion and habitat classifications of fossil monkey postcrania of the Cradle of Humankind (Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng - Director of the PalaeoResearch Institute at UJ); The forgotten fossils from the Cradle of Humankind: First fossil record of Agama and spitting Elapidae from Bolt’s Farm, South Africa (by Nonhlanhla “Nonny” Vilakazi, P-RI, UJ); When Ethics Fail: Unmasking the Duplicity of Eurocentric Universal Pretensions in the African Context (Nokuthula Hlabangane – UNISA); South Korean Development Assistance in Africa: exporting development programmes with roots in authoritarianism or the struggle for democracy? (Wiebe Nauta, Maastricht). Moore co-ordinated the SADS seminars in term 3, in which he altered the usual format of one-paper presentations into conversations with academics on various themes within the parameter of ‘The end(s) of development’. Over 30 scholars in universities including Australia’s ANU, Birkbeck, Cagliari, Carleton, Cambridge, Kent State, Milan, Toronto, UFS, UJ (featuring three of our department’s and sociology’s books), and Wits, participated in rigorous discussions on topics ranging from the legacies of liberation in southern Africa to sports, ‘Gramsci in Africa’, epidemics (based on Professor Stadler’s recent book), and ‘hustling’. Research, grants, associates and postdocs All of the above gives clear indication that the deliberate strategy adopted after a series of awayday strategy meetings in early 2019, to focus attention on improving academic standards, and particularly the quality and volume of research and publications, over the last three years is beginning to pay off. We have attracted some
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