The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), launched in 2015, is a collaborative initiative involving the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. [1]
Established on 14 May 2015, JIAS deviates from conventional educational and research routines, focusing instead on promoting cooperative and concentrated scholarly pursuits within the Humanities and Natural Sciences. [2] [3] [4]
JIAS also collaborates with other tertiary institutions nationwide. [3]
JIAS operates from a residential facility situated in the outskirts of Johannesburg. The inaugural meeting of JIAS, co-chaired by UJ's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ihron Rensburg, and NTU's President, Professor Bertil Andersson, coincided with the institute's launch day. [5] Attendees included Professor K. K. Phua, director of the NTU Institute for Advanced Study, Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research, Postgraduate Studies & Library) and later Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UJ, Dr Yu-Hyun Park from NTU's President's Office, and Professor Peter Vale, Director of JIAS.
Since 2019, Dr Bongani Ngqulunga has served as the director of JIAS. [6]
JIAS funds Writing Fellowships, recipients of which have been drawn from different disciplines: academics, novelists, scientists, poets, playwrights, independent researchers and journalists. [7] [8] JIAS is host to the annual Johannesburg Festival of Women Writers, inaugurated in February 2023 by Barbara Masekela. [9] [10]
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is one of Singapore's two major national universities. Founded in 1981, it is also the second-oldest autonomous university in the country. NTU is frequently ranked within the world's top 30 universities according to most major international rankings, and is widely-considered to be one of the two most prestigious universities in Singapore, the other being the National University of Singapore.
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The university has its roots in the mining industry, as do Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand in general. Founded in 1896 as the South African School of Mines in Kimberley, it is the third oldest South African university in continuous operation.
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York is a public research institution and postgraduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, The CUNY Graduate Center is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". The school is located at the B. Altman and Company Building at 365 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The CUNY Graduate Center has 4,600 students, 31 doctoral programs, 14 master's programs, and 30 research centers and institutes. It employs a core faculty of approximately 140, who are supplemented by 1,800 faculty members from CUNY's eleven senior colleges and New York City's cultural and scientific institutions.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal is a university with five campuses in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2004 after the merger between the University of Natal and the University of Durban-Westville.
The Harkness Fellowship is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several countries to spend time studying in the United States.
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is a public university located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The University of Johannesburg came into existence on 1 January 2005 as the result of a merger between the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), the Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) and the Soweto and East Rand campuses of Vista University. Prior to the merger, the Daveyton and Soweto campuses of the former Vista University had been incorporated into RAU. As a result of the merger of Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), it is common for alumni to refer to the university as RAU. The vice-chancellor and principal of UJ is Professor Letlhokwa George Mpedi who took office on 1 January 2023. Between 2018 and 2022, UJ's vice-chancellor and principal was Tshilidzi Marwala.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory.
Tshilidzi Marwala is a South African artificial intelligence engineer, a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer and a university administrator. He is currently Rector of the United Nations University and UN Under-Secretary-General. In August 2023 Marwala was appointed to the United Nations scientific advisory council.
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The North-West University (NWU) is a public research university located on three campuses in Potchefstroom, Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark in South Africa. The university came into existence through the merger of the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, a large, historical university dating back to 1869, which also had a branch in Vanderbijlpark, and the University of North-West in 2004. With its merged status, the North-West University became one of the largest universities in South Africa with the third largest student population in the country.
Françoise Lionnet serves as acting chair of the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, where she is professor of Romance languages and literatures, comparative literature, and African and African American studies. She is distinguished research professor of comparative literature and French and Francophone studies at UCLA, and a research associate of the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She served as director of the African Studies Center and Program Co-Director of UCLA's Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities: Cultures in Transnational Perspective.
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Peter Vale is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and the Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics Emeritus at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is also an honorary professor at the Africa Earth Observatory Network (AEON) of which he was a founding member. Notably, Vale was the founding director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) and acting vice-rector for academic affairs and deputy vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He has also received an honoury doctorate in the Humanities from the University of the Free State, South Africa.
Fulufhelo Vincent Nelwamondo (OMS) is an electrical engineer by training, and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa. He is the youngest recipient of the Harvard-South Africa Fellowship Programme amongst other honours. His research and practical experience has covered a wide spectrum of areas, including software engineering and computational intelligence. His interests include biometrics-based systems, data mining and machine learning tools.
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Judith Ruth Buchanan is a British academic specialising in Shakespeare and film studies. Since October 2019, she has been Master of St Peter's College, Oxford. Since January 2023, she has been a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.