Home /
Engagement and Transformation
The Engagement and Transformation Portfolio
Co-creating the transformative, responsive university.
Find out more
Engagement
Engaging and forming partnerships, interacting with stakeholders and reaching out and contributing towards the sustainable development of the communities we serve.
Find out more
Transformation
Promoting institutional transformation through programmatic interventions focusing on the Constitutional principles of human dignity, equality, fairness, non-racism, non-sexism, and redress.
Find out more
*iconography adapted with the permission of artist: Xolela Madlanga
Research and Engagement Entities
Centre for the Advancement of Non-racialism and Democracy
CANRAD provides an intellectual and social space for debate and research on the complexities of post-apartheid South Africa as we seek to establish a new non-racial and democratic social and economic order.
Find out more
Centre for Women and Gender Studies
Framed around the histories of African intellectual traditions in the region, the CWGS seeks to contribute to an inclusive gender programme through research, gender mainstreaming in teaching, advocacy and engagement.
Find out more
Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training
CIPSET is a centre of learning, engagement and research excellence through socially engaged public scholarship in the areas of community, vocational and worker education.
Find out more
HIV & AIDS Research Unit
Striving to promote and sustain a collaborative response to the HIV & AIDS pandemic through governance, teaching and learning, research, community engagement and service provision.
Find out more
*iconography adapted with the permission of artist: Pola Maneli
Research Chairs and Institutes
Chair – Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation
CriSHET's praxis and programmatic work is rooted in the study of higher education through the lenses of critique and critical action, within the orbit of Critical University Studies (CUS) and other radical approaches to the study of the sector.
Find out more
Chair – Youth Unemployment, Employability and Empowerment
Advances cutting edge scholarship on the ways in which skills and Vocational Education and Training (VET) intervene in poverty and unemployment.
Find out more
Transdisciplinary Institute for Mandela Studies
TIMS is a joint project between the University, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Human Sciences Research Council to implement the scholarly formulation of the Mandela legacy.
Find out more
*iconography adapted with the permission of artist: Pola Maneli
Strategic Projects and Working Groups
Hubs of Convergence
The HoC offers physical and intellectual spaces to explore, experiment and reimagine the process of engagement between the University and its communities.
Find out more
COVID-19 Coordinating Committee
The CCC coordinates the University's external response to the COVID-19 pandemic in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders, including local and provincial government, civil society, the private sector, and other communities.
Find out more
Food Systems Working Group
The Food Systems Working Group aims to understand, clarify, and map the various existing food system projects and programmes active in the University space, and to explore the potential of connecting - or the convergence of - these projects and programmes to be responsive to the challenges of food and food systems, both locally and globally.
Find out more
*iconography adapted with the permission of artist: Pola Maneli
Engagement and Transformation News
Handover of playground initiative – KaziPlay – at two Gqeberha primary schools
Nelson Mandela University’s Departments of Human Movement Science and Architecture, together with Mandela University alumnus and architect Jacques Theron from the company Werk, have completed enhancements to playground and ablution facilities at two under-resourced schools in Gqeberha.
African voices: awakening a lost literary canon
The systematic erasure of African knowledge has stripped society of values and world views that need to be reawakened through our universities. This is an important undertaking in revitalising the humanities at Mandela University. Heather Dugmore reports.
ACUSAfrica colloquium gets under way at Mandela University
Leading scholars, activists, and higher education practitioners from across the world, and Africa in particular, have gathered at Nelson Mandela University for the first of the three-day Advancing Critical University Studies Across Africa (ACUSAfrica) network’s 2022 colloquium.
Partnership to restore hope through fight against substance abuse
Substance abuse remains one of the biggest challenges affecting our communities and a concerted effort is being made to address this social ill in the Eastern Cape, in general, and Gqeberha, in particular.