About 100 postgraduate students from the Eastern Cape Universities and South Africa are expected to attend the Inter-disciplinary 6th annual postgraduate conference from 8 to 10 October organised by the Rhodes University Post Graduate Liaison Subcommittee (PGLSC).
Over the years the conference has grown from an internal gathering to a conference that attracts delegates from other Universities in the Eastern Cape.
For the first time, this year the conference has gone national and includes representatives from a range of higher education institutions and corporate sector. The conference theme is “Leading Research, when only the best is good enough”.
It offers an ideal platform to for postgraduates students to discuss and debate problems that they encounter in their research through peer discussions.
According to conference coordinator, Leroy Maisiri, the aim of the conference is to allow postgraduate researchers the opportunity to showcase their research, discuss it with other researchers from various universities and gain experience in the art of presenting at a conference.
He said he hopes the conference will promote collaborations and synergy between researchers and thereby improve the collective research output of South Africa. Being an interdisciplinary conference, he said researchers from all faculties are encouraged to participate.
“I believe we have the potential to host the biggest annual conference in South Africa. This year we are sticking to 100 delegates but we are going national for the first time so it won’t just be Rhodes University and Eastern Cape universities,” he said.
He said organisation is going well so far and his commitment to give his best in everything he does is paying off. “I have put in all I have into this conference and I appear to be three weeks ahead of schedule and appropriately funded,” he said.
The conference was founded in 2003 with the aim of bridging the gap between university staff and postgraduate students at Rhodes University
Maisiri is reading for a Masters in Industrial and Economic Sociology at Rhodes, is a teaching assistant in the Sociology department and an alumni donor administrator.
By Sarah-Jane Bradfield
Photo: supplied