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Drs Ernest Dube and Chantelle Clohessy
The FPP is funded by the South African government and the fellows are nominated by the 26 South African public universities across the disciplines.
The programme addresses underrepresentation in senior academic ranks and prepares for the imminent retirement of a generation of scholars.
Dr Clohessy is a senior lecturer and Head of the Department of Statistics, where she has been for 14 years.
Her research focuses on statistical applications in renewable energy, including wind turbine noise analysis, solar panel fault detection, energy yield estimation, and solar resource forecasting.
Her expertise includes machine learning, convolutional neural networks, linear models, and Bayesian analysis.
Dr Clohessy has also collaborated extensively with the Physics Department, particularly with Professor Ernest van Dyk and his team. She holds an NRF Y2-rating and has presented her research both nationally and internationally, also publishing in DHET-accredited journals, with one paper receiving over 150 citations. Dr Clohessy has also successfully completed the Thuthuka programme, securing funding through the PhD, postdoctoral, and rating tracks.
Dr Dube is a senior lecturer and researcher in Agricultural Plant Production and Soil Science at the University’s George Campus.
His research focuses on conservation agriculture, sustainable soil fertility management, and resilient cropping systems, to advance climate-smart and sustainable farming in southern Africa. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and recently co-edited Towards Sustainable Food Production in Africa.
Dr Dube’s latest project, funded by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, promotes climate change adaptation among smallholder farmers through sorghum–cowpea rotation systems. He serves on the National Crop Estimates Committee and has volunteered as a project manager for a local Correctional Services food security garden project since 2019. He holds an NRF C2-research rating.
Before joining the University, Dr Dube worked as an agricultural consultant and later as a researcher at the Agricultural Research Council – Small Grain Institute, where he coordinated the National Wheat Cultivar Evaluation trials. He maintains strong research collaborations with the ARC and the Western Cape Department of Agriculture.
The FPP supports the transformation of the South African professoriate by rigorously selecting senior lecturers (equivalent to the US tenure track), identified by their institutions as being “on the cusp of promotion”, and preparing them for professorship.
As a preparatory programme, the FPP engages fellows in reflecting on their professional identities and the ethical foundations of scholarship in a highly unequal, diverse society. It affirms that equity and diversity are essential to excellence and global scholarly standing. The programme offers sustained scholarly engagement and international exposure to expand each fellow’s global profile.
Recognising fellows as future academic leaders, the FPP supports the development of a viable five- to eight-year intellectual project to sustain their research as they transition into mid-career leadership roles that may limit their research focus.
A number of Mandela University academics have successfully completed the programme.