Rhodes University is hosting the second installation of the 2017 Vice Chancellor’s Senior Distinguished Teaching and Research Award lectures on Thursday, 24 August 2017. The teaching awards aim to stimulate scholarly teaching, research, and to recognise new lecturers who are exceptional in their discipline.
Joint winners of the VC’s 2016 Distinguished Research Awards, Dr Dion Nkomo and Professor Julie Coetzee will present their respective lectures at Eden Grove Blue Lecture Theatre at 18h30.
Prof Julie Coetzee will present her lecture titled A (Biocontrol) Bug’s Life.
“My research career started in 1998 as an Honours student where I worked on the biological control of water hyacinth, the world’s worst weed, using a bug called Eccritotarsus catarinensis. Almost 20 years later, I am still researching new and exciting aspects about this fascinating bug, in an attempt to understand plant-insect relationships, and to improve control of a notorious weed,” explains Prof Coetzee.
Dr Dion Nkomo’s lecture is on Beyond the Drudgery: An Overview of Some Scholarly Adventures of a Lexicographer in an African Context. Lexicography has been described as a field that suffers from identity crisis. In simple terms, lexicography is defined as the compilation and study of dictionaries.
“While some scholars regard it as one of the so-called applied linguistics, others regard it as a fully-fledged discipline. What is not being disputed however is that dictionaries occupy the core of lexicography. This lecture will provide an overview of metalexicographic research in order to prove that, contrary to Samuel Johnson’s definition, a lexicographer is much more than “a harmless drudge”.