While much of the work of STIAS Fellows occur within the tranquil, enriching and stimulating environment that an institute for advanced study provides (and moreover, in the attractive environments of the Mostertsdrift estate and its surroundings), STIAS has from the outset endeavoured to bring the work of leading scholars and scientists to a larger public.
Since the inception of the Fellowship programme, STIAS has hosted a series of public lectures by STIAS Fellows on the Stellenbosch University campus. Presenting three to four lectures per semester, the series has offered an opportunity to academics, researchers and students at Stellenbosch University and other universities in the Western Cape, as well as members of the public, to learn more about the work of STIAS fellows and associates.
The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 motivated the launch of a new webinar series of lectures. Drawing on the work of STIAS fellows over a period of more than a decade, STIAS has been able to invite leading voices from around the world to reflect on the times we are living in from different perspectives.
A future invited annual lecture series is being planned.
Find an overview of STIAS lectures to date below, with links to the lecture announcements and reports where available.
Public Lecture Series
2024
- Nigel Shadbolt, Standing on the edge of error
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Hans Westerhoff, Beyond physics and law: How biology deals with uncertainties in health and disease
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Wamuwi Mbao, The End of National Narrative
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Diethard Tautz, The evolutionary fluidity of sex
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Godfrey Mwampembwa, currently working on a project titled The Martyr: A Graphic Comic Novel
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Elsabé Loots, currently working on a project titled Aid flows to Africa in the context of continued global destabilising shocks, uncertainty, renewed challenges and aid dependence
Lecture announcement; Lecture report
2023
- John Dupré, Human Processes
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Irus Braverman, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Glenn Adams & Kopano Ratele, Toward a Decolonial Africa-centering Psychology: Beyond the Whitestream Gaze on Racism and Well-being
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Michael Jennions, The Ins and Outs of Sex: a few fun questions
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Linda Richter, We’ve come a long way, baby!
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Nkatha Kabira, The Furture of Law and Governance in Africa
Lecture announcement; Lecture report
2022
- William Beinart, Land Reform and Rural Production in South Africa
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Gibson Ncube, Queer bodies in African films
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Barbara König, Conspecifics matter: Revealing the basis and the significance of social interactions
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Cedric de Coning, Adaptive Peace: Insights from Complexity for Strengthening the Resilience and Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems under Stress
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Jerry Ochola, Computational Modelling of Tubular Fibrous Structures for Cardiovascular Graft Applications
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Katja Petzold, Dancing RNA – understanding RNA dynamics for developing next-generation drugs
- William Beinart, Land Reform and Rural Production in South Africa
2021
- Malebogo Ngoepe, Blood clotting in disease: The role of blood flow
Webinar announcement; Lecture report - Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Shona Subject: Who, How, If and Where to After All That
Webinar announcement; Lecture report - Emmanuel Akyeampong, Early Independent Africa’s Abortive Attempt at Industrialization: The Case of Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah
Webinar announcement; Lecture report - Andreas Wagner, “Sleeping beauties: Dormant innovations in nature and culture”
Webinar announcement; Lecture report - Bahru Zewde, The Vexed Question of Identity in Ethiopia: A Historical Perspective
Webinar announcement; Lecture report - Caroline Kerfoot, Towards Epistemic Justice: Language, Identity, and Relations of Knowing in Post-colonial Schools
Webinar announcement; Lecture report
2020
- Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta, The Evolutionary Commons: Putting Darwinism to Work for Humanity in a Time of Existential Crisis
Webinar announcement; Webinar report - Ian Goldin, The Pandemic that Changed the World
Webinar announcement; Webinar report
2019
- Sylvia Tamale, Peeling away the layers of colonization: The case of the African academy
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Carol Summers, “Make your money fight!”: Patriotic thrift in Britain, Canada, and Uganda during the Second World War
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Yvette Christiansë, “Untold wealth for the benefit of the World”: Liberated Africans and the Cost of Freedom
Lecture announcement - NoViolet Bulawayo, Notes from Glory
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Claudia Gastrow, The Discomforts of Home: Class, Infrastructure and Aesthesis in Luanda, Angola
Lecture announcement - Kathleen Thelen, Regulating Uber: The Politics of the Platform Economy in the United States and Europe
Lecture announcement; Lecture report
2018
- Jian-Wei Pan, From Einstein’s Curiosity to New Quantum Technologies
Lecture announcement - Kelvin Campbell, Making Massive Small Change: Ideas, tools and tactics to build the urban society we all want
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Izuu Nwankwo, Who is Afraid of Stand-up Comedy?
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Manuel Castells, The Global Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Trump, Brexit and Beyond
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Olaf Zenker, Land Restitution and the Moral Modernity of the New South African State
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Abdulrazak Gurnah, Reading the World
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform
Lecture announcement
2017
- Carlos Ibanez, Dementia: clinical overview and preclinical research
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Gabeba Baderoon, Axis and Revolution (a poetry reading)
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Tolullah Oni, Re-conceptualising Health in Cities: Challenges and Opportunities
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Ian Goldin, Renaissance 2.0: The Disruptive Changes Shaping Our World
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Onur Güntürkün, The Parallel Evolution of Cognition in Birds and Mammals
Lecture announcement
2016
- Richard Price, The Psychology of Colonial Violence
Lecture announcement - Winston P.Nagan, The Future of Higher Education: The salience of basic human rights values
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Robert Martin, Darwinian Medicine: Evolutionary Insights into Human Reproduction
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Barney Pityana, Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Philosophy: A Contribution to South Africa’s System of Ideas
Lecture announcement - Michal Linial, Big Data meets Human Health
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Zoë Wicomb, Reading Brian Chikwava’s novel, Harare North
Lecture announcement - Paul Vlek, Land Degradation: A threat to food security in Sub-Saharan Africa
Lecture announcement - Fritz Vollrath, Unraveling Spider Webs and Silks
Lecture announcement
2015
- Vidyanand Nanjundiah, To what extent is biology an autonomous science?
Lecture announcement - Artur Ekert, The ultimate physical limits of privacy
Lecture announcement - Shireen Hassim , “We are here to claim our rights”
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Francis Nyamnjoh, Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Anne Phillips, The Politics of the Human
Lecture announcement - Reiner Klingholz, Humanity after Growth
Lecture announcement - Salima Ikram, May They Live Forever: Ancient Egyptian Mummies
Lecture announcement
2014
- Michael Ruse, The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet
Lecture announcement - Christof Heyns, Autonomous Weapons Systems: Coming to a theatre near you?
Lecture announcement - Manuel Castells, Rethinking Development in the Global Information Age: Implications for Africa
Lecture announcement - Roberto Poli, Anticipation: Using the Future for Understanding the Present
Lecture announcement - Carol Gilligan, Moral Injury and the Ethic of Care: Reframing the Conversation about Differences
Lecture announcement; Lecture report - Wolfgang Huber, Human Rights and Globalisation: Are Human Rights a “Western” Concept or Universalistic Principles?
Lecture announcement; Lecture report
2013
- Zakes Mda, Place, memory, orature and the creative process: Readings from the fictions of Zakes Mda
Lecture announcement - Brian Warner, From Salt River to SALT
Lecture announcement - Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo, Democracy, Separation of Powers and the Adjudication of Socioeconomic Rights
Lecture announcement - Ian Hacking, Trees, Races, Genealogies: Classification as Sedimentation
Lecture announcement - Abdallah Daar, Innovating to Address Grand Challenges in Global Health
Lecture announcement - Harald zur Hausen, Are colon cancers and childhood leukemias caused by infections?
Lecture announcement - John Dugard, Do the political transitions in South Africa and Namibia have any lessons for Palestine?
Lecture announcement
2012
- Marcello Barbieri, Code Biology: A New Science of Life
Lecture announcement - Nina Jablonski, Skin Colour: Its Evolution and Meaning in the Modern World
Lecture announcement - Mario Giampietro, Taking the red pill: the failure of reductionism in sustainability analysis
Lecture announcement