New Universities Project, South Africa
School of Heritage, Northern Cape
Preliminary Call for Interest

Two new universities will open in South Africa in 2014/15. These are the first universities to be launched by the South African government since the move to full democracy in 1994, and will be located in the town of Nelspruit, Mpumalanga Province and the city of Kimberley, Northern Cape Province.

As part of a drive to focus on indigenous histories and culture, Kimberley will open its School of Heritage in 2015/16, initially incorporating qualifications in Field Archaeology and Museum Studies. Provision will also be made for teaching and research in the Palaeosciences. A Centre for Khoisan Research will stand at the heart of the School, offering research opportunities to scholars involved in any discipline related to this subject, including but not limited to ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, politics, gender, sociology, genetics, education, traditional medicine, oral traditions, art, and history. The unit will provide archive and storage space for researchers active in fieldwork within the wider region (including those working with communities or on sites in neighbouring Namibia and Botswana), laboratory, library and research resources (including trained fieldwork assistants), as well as short to medium-term accommodation for both international and local academic visitors.

The School will require permanent lecturing staff in Field Archaeology and Museum Studies from 2015 and/or 2016, and in the Palaeosciences soon after. In addition, the School wishes to make use of sessional lecturers to cover a range of courses and modules, thus providing high-calibre teaching to our students in combination with on-the-ground research opportunities to our sessional staff. We would welcome graduate or undergraduate students who might accompany sessional lecturers to South Africa from their respective home institutions.