Following two preliminary exclusive screenings at Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare, the 65-minute-long documentary film, Intellectual Giants of the Eastern Cape, officially premiered at the 25th Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) in June 2022.

A long-serving Rhodes University Board of Governors member and Chairperson, Mr Mike Spicer, passed away this week.

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Rhodes University PhD student Aviwe Matiwane shows, along with six other researchers, how colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity.

Every year, the Mail & Guardian searches for the 200 most outstanding young South Africans and celebrates them. This year, the newspaper received about 8 000 nominations, and 10 current and former Rhodes University students featured on the list of 200.

Two hundred years ago 5,000 people from Britain were settled in the south eastern part of South Africa in an area around present-day Makhanda and Port Alfred, then called the ‘Zuurveld’, by the British colonial authorities. To some South Africans (and particularly to many of their descendants) they are heroised as having brought development and ‘civilization’ to the area.

On 18 of February 2020, the Cory Library hosted the launch of Indoda Ebisithanda (The Man Who Loved Us): The Reverend James Laing among the amaXhosa 1831-1836, edited by Dr Sandy Shell, Senior Research Associate at Cory Library.

The etymology of a word goes a long way in teaching us the history, the routes and the roots of a word as expressed at a joint Rhodes University and Makhanda Black Kollective (MBK) community seminar entitled ‘Ukuhlambulula from an anti-humane world’ in Fingo Village, Makhanda.

Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University’s Cory Library, Dr Sandra Rowoldt Shell, recently spoke at the 33rd annual Oromo Studies Association (OSA) conference, which was held on ‘home ground’ for the first time in history.

Rhodes University PhD candidate in the Department of Economics and Economic History, Nandi Fumbata, is attending the BRICS Network University (BRICS NU) Research Seminar and Winter School, currently underway at the University of Campinas in Brazil.

Imagine there are no longer universities, where the spaces of higher education are no longer producing knowledge. Imagine these institutions were to become obsolete. This was the issue historians were grappling with during one of the afternoon sessions on the second day of the Southern African Historical Society conference at Rhodes University, entitled: “Universities: Politics and Policies.”

Addressing over 200 historians, artists, archivists, curators and scholars at the 27th biennial South African Historical Society (SAHS) conference, keynote speaker Professor Francis Nyamnjoh from the University of Cape Town challenged the audience to embrace their incompleteness as scholars and to borrow from one another on their journey of self-activation.

Barely a year before the 200th anniversary of the 1820 English Settlers who occupied parts of the Eastern Cape including Makhanda, the 27th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) comes to Rhodes University

Hlumela Palesa Mkabile, a recent Masters in Linguistics graduate of Rhodes University, has opted to explore dynamic and versatile research about the Xhosa language in her thesis, which is the first of its kind in over 30 years.

The 2018 DCS Oosthuizen Memorial Lecture took place at Rhodes University’s Eden Grove Blue Lecture Theatre on Friday, the 28th of September 2018.

Rhodes University’s language policy is based on the principles of ‘promoting multilingualism and the intellectualisation of African languages’.

Today marks 40 years since the death of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe - a teacher, lecturer, lawyer, founding member and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Robben Island prisoner.

Over the past few weeks the #unfairandlovely campaign started by black photographer Pax Jones and sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah from the University of Texas has taken off on social media.

So I listened to the discussion between Nomboniso Gasa and Wanelisa Xaba on 702.

IT IS a fairly common complaint in my circle of young black professionals that we do not have the kind of networks and social capital that our white counterparts have to help them get ahead.

Dr Nomalanga Mkhize was awarded a Mellon Next Generation Academic Programme lectureship from 2004 – 2006 when she completed her Master’s degree. Dr Mkhize is a lecturer in the History Department today.

The Next Generation Academic Programme is absolutely crucial to bring young, committed, inspiring lecturers into the University.These are the future leaders of Rhodes and we need to be proactive about identifying them,” says Distinguished Professor Paul Maylam.

After being awarded a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholarship in the History Department in 2005/6, Professor Enocent Msindo was subsequently appointed as a lecturer on the Next Generation Academic Programme from 2007 to 2009, also funded by Mellon. Today he is an NRF-rated researcher and an Associate Professor in the History Department.

WHEN the 2008 financial crash happened, Queen Elizabeth apparently wrote a letter to the UK’s top economists to ask them why they had not foreseen it.

IN 1998 eminent Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani put forward the following challenge to his colleagues at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

IS IT really worth paying up to R100,000 a year to get an undergraduate degree from one of SA’s top universities?

THERE’s an African idiom that warns that if you let your child be a menace to the community, one day that same child will chase you around the house with your own sjambok.

THERE is a joke going around in the human rights legal fraternity that much of its litigation against the Department of Basic Education is akin to taking the Post Office to court to get stamps. That is how pedantic the struggle for improving education for the majority children in SA has become.

I am afraid I have succumbed to the lure of "oscar" commentary and wish to offer a somewhat different view from Jonny Steinberg's "racial shame" explanation, on this page last week, of many white South Africans' antagonistic responses to the athlete's murder acquittal.

IN THE wake of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a small contingent of health workers and scientists has been on the front lines of fighting the disease in laboratories, hospitals and makeshift World Health Organisation care centres in under-resourced villages and towns.

Wider concerns with racial representation in academia conceal a significant gender imbalance

Rhodes University Emeritus Professor Paul Maylam delivered a keynote address focused on Rhodes University’s history

What dire household financial situation drove rock drillers to wage low-intensity war on their employers in Marikana in 2012?

This year marked 40 years of the Grahamstown-based National Arts Festival, which is not only the biggest festival in SA, but also in Africa.

The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has made much ado about the reopening of the land claims process under the newly amended Restitution Act.

History is written by all those who have the resources to tell their version, writes Gary Baines.

WHEN, as a first-year student at Rhodes University in 2000, Rebecca Hodes and a friend established an association called SHARC

As the ANC becomes increasingly divided along ideological and moral lines

This article is a direct follow-up to a question posed to Dr Nomalanga Mkhize at a Women's Academic Solidarity Association (WASA) discussion entitled: "Teaching the Born Frees: The Dea(r)th of Youth Intellectualism in the Post-Apartheid University".

Debating the extent to which young South Africans are engaging with the complex political dynamics of contemporary society, several Rhodes University lecturers recently presented their views on the topic, “Teaching the Born Frees: The Dea(r)th of Youth Intellectualism in the Post-Apartheid University?”

Widely acknowledged to be in a state of crisis, education in South Africa is a hot topic of debate for many South African citizens. With 26% of matriculants who passed Grade 12 in 2012 receiving a nonconventional degree pass, the spotlight is firmly on the shocking skills shortages, lack of resources, poor teacher training, corruption and maladministration, a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale that plague the majority of South African schools.