The conferral of honorary and adjunct professorships acknowledge the recipients’ contributions to scholarship and professional fields, respectively. CANRAD looks forward to fruitful collaborations with these new appointees, with a view to advancing Nelson Mandela University’s focus on revitalising the Humanities while being in service to society.
Honorary Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Professor and Research Chair for Historical Trauma and Transformation, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Stellenbosch University. She is author of the award-winning A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness, Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Healing Trauma (as co-author), Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past (as co-editor), and Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition: A Global Dialogue on Historical Trauma and Memory (as editor). In 2005, Prof Gobodo-Madikizela was honoured among ‘100 People who made a difference’, and in 2010, she received the ‘Social Change Award’ from Rhodes University for ‘contributions by leading psychologists to social change in South Africa.’
Honorary Professor Josephine Ahikire, Principal, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and former Dean, School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University, Uganda. Her books include Controlling Consent: Uganda’s 2016 Elections (2017) and Gender Poverty and Social Transformation: Reflections on Fractures and Continuities in Contemporary Uganda published (2014) (as co-editor) and the monograph Localised or Localising Democracy: Gender and the Politics of Decentralisation in Contemporary Uganda (2007). She is a member of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and is a participant in the programmes on ‘Countering the Backlash against Gender Justice’ at the Institute of Development Studies and ‘Effective States in Development’ (ESID) at the University of Manchester, both in Britain.
Honorary Professor Mumbi Mwangi, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at St Cloud State University, USA. Her books are Championing Change: Perspectives from International Women in Higher Education (2016) and We Will Have Gained Ourselves: Narrative Experiences of African Women Pursuing Higher Education in the US (2009), and she is the founder and chief editor of the Journal of Global Gender Studies. She was the recipient of the prestigious Carnegie African Diaspora (CAD) Fellowship and a CAD Fellow at Nelson Mandela University in 2015. She is also the founder and CEO of Ngatha International USA, a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to restore hope and dignity to women and children through sustainable community projects in rural Africa.
Adjunct Professor Karen Zoid, multi-award winning South African musician, singer, song writer, music and television producer and talk show host. She has released 14 albums and collaborated with artists such as Vusi Mahlasela, Dorothy Masuka, Thandiswa Mazwai, Zolani Mahola and Laurika Rauch. Zoid’s television talk and music show on DSTV, Republiek van Zoid Afrika, is in its sixth season and has won several National Film and Video Foundation’s South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs). As a successful business woman and entrepreneur, Zoid’s Mothership music and television recording studio attracts artists from across the continent. She performed at former President Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday concert and at the inauguration celebration of former President Thabo Mbeki. Time magazine called her a South African musical icon and she received the South African Music Awards accolade of being named Best Female Artist.
Left to right: Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Prof Karen Zoid, Prof Mumbi Mwangi and Prof Josephine Ahikire