It is with great pleasure that we announce Prof Tally Palmer from the Institute for Water Research (IWR) as the recipient of the 2018 Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Award for Community Engagement.
In November 2016, Tally was appointed as the Director of the IWR. Tally’s aspiration as a leader within the IWR and Rhodes University has been to undertake, supervise and collaborate in research that is used effectively, and as rapidly as possible, to advance equity and sustainability in South Africa. She is a pioneer of what has become known as engaged research: research that is practice-based, draws on knowledge across usual academic domains and from practitioners and communities, and is used to effect behavioural change towards achieving social and, for Tally, ecological justice.
Tally knows that it is increasingly necessary to embrace the need for a diverse set of skills and expertise to tackle the mounting challenges of sustainable management of South Africa’s water resources. By focussing on ensuring that water catchment research is used as directly as possibly to solve problems in water scarce regions, Tally’s research has taken her out of the laboratory and into communities.
Since 2013 Tally’s main engaged research activities have been undertaken in the area of Integrated Water Resource Management, where she has worked extensively in the Upper Kowie and Crocodile River catchments. Her work in the Upper Kowie catchment was engaged at the local government (Makana), sub-catchment scale, and has accelerated local water institutional development with the establishment of the first South African Water, Sanitation and Catchment Management Forum. To date more than 85 stakeholders, widely and deeply representative of local interests have actively participated in the Makana Water Forum. Working in the Crocodile River Catchment, Tally addressed the Adaptive Integrated Water Resource Management challenge of building a co-operative integrated water quality monitoring process, to forge solutions to deteriorating water quality as a threat to water resource protection. This ground-breaking work brought many large industries together (including sugar, pulp and paper, and mining industries), with local government, water service providers, water managers, and regulators.
Her ability to engage with ministers, directors general and ordinary citizens has enabled a connection to research on the ground as well as into government structures. Her far reaching contributions to the water sector saw her nominated for the SASAqS Gold medal award in 2016 by the late Professor Jay O’Keeffe who wrote in his nomination: “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Tally has been the most effective and influential ‘game-changer’ of her generation of aquatic scientists. Respected and listened to by her peers, by water managers and by policy makers up to national ministerial level, Tally has been instrumental in main streaming environmental water science into practice in a number of areas”.
Please take the time to listen to this podcast in which Tally talks about her work: https://iono.fm/e/551386.
The Award to Prof Tally Palmer from the Institute for Water Research will be made at the 2019 Graduation Ceremony, and the team will be invited to give a public lecture on their collaborative outreach initiatives to open Community Engagement Week 2019.
Congratulations to Prof Tally Palmer!