NMU staff, students well represented on international stage

Nelson Mandela University students and staff have been gracing national and international platforms with their work throughout the month and aiding in everything from nature conservation to ancestral values surrounding genderbased violence.

NMU’s Prof Graham Kerley of the zoology department and director of the Centre for African Conservation Ecology recently received the Wildlife Excellence Award from the Southern African Wildlife Management Association for his contribution to wildlife research, capacity building and practice in Southern Africa.

Highlighted in Kerley’s award citation was his conceptualisation of the Greater Addo Elephant National Park, which had led to the growth of the park from 12,000ha to more than 200,000ha. Kerley was also honoured for his service in advising government and his role on the boards of South African National Parks and Eastern Cape Parks, and as an invited member of three international IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Species Survival Commission specialist groups.

Meanwhile, halfway across the world, engineering student Wian van Aswegen’s metal additively manufactured golf putter was on display at the 2022 International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, US.

IMTS is the biggest manufacturing trade show in the world and had foot traffic of about 86,000 attendees over the last week.

September also saw Prof Althea de Villiers and Robert Gillmer (MMus in performing arts) travel to Istanbul, Turkey, to present conference papers at the International Conference on Innovation in Basic Higher Education, at Istanbul Technical University.

Prof De Villiers’s paper, titled “Navigating the future of the music department: possible scenarios”, was well received.

She also co-presented a paper with Gillmer titled “The exploration of the institutionalisation of contemporary commercial music (CCM) in higher education”.

A little closer to home, NMU’s mechatronics department staff recently assisted three lecturers from the Takoradi Technical University in Ghana with a train-the-trainer course, enabling them to educate the youth in Ghana on cutting edge, real-world Siemens industrial technology.

Mechatronics lecturers Thabelo Mohlala (MEng student) and Ntuthuko Nsibande and marine engineering lecturer John Fernandes (PhD student) are involved in the project.

Postgraduate student Phakamani Pungu-Pungu presented her research in gender-based violence at the International Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Pungu-Pungu presented her unique piece, “Akanankomo lomfana: A philosophical analysis of what it means to be a Xhosa girl in Mirriam Makeba’s song”, which aligned with the conference’s theme of intimacy, violence and power.

The paper presents a preventive measure against gender-based violence by focusing on philosophical strands that are rooted in indigenous knowledge systems that promote the values of Xhosa people and subsequently their cultural identity.