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about esi

Welcome to the Emerging Scholars Initiative (ESI), a vibrant platform standing on three pillars that underpin our commitment to shaping a brighter future. Through ESI Press we support early career scholars publish their research. ESI Labs, our research arm, shapes positive change through multi-disciplinary collaboration and a challenge-based learning approach. Our ESI Reach pilar focuses on promoting academic impact by facilitating broader distribution of scholarly work. This is where  diverse perspectives thrive, innovative research unfolds and scholarly impact shapes a more informed and a better future.

Vol. 46 No. 1 (2024): The Strategic Review for Southern Africa

The Strategic Review for Southern Africa is an internationally accredited and peer-reviewed periodical of the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. The Strategic Review is listed as an accredited journal in South Africa and on the IBSS (international) list of accredited journals. All submissions are peer-reviewed by at least two members of the Editorial Committee and/or external reviewers.

HumanEATies – 100 Recipes by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria

Why a cookbook, and why does it matter to a Faculty of Humanities?

Food represents our edible world. It is a concept, an idea and a practice. It is because food is more than a micronutrient and a science. Food represents what Appadurai describes as the social lives of things. It is deeply sociocultural and fundamentally associative and relational.

South Africa’s Easy Election Guide: Who To Vote For in 2024

South Africa’s most important election since 1994 may deliver the first coalition government in a democratic South Africa. However, as political parties vie for the votes of South Africans: How do citizens make the choice of where to put their mark? Who can they trust to give voice to their aspirations and help rebuild and grow Africa’s most developed economy to benefit more people in the world’s most unequal society?

recently released

FICTION AND FABLE: TALES OF TIME-SERIES

Author: Johan Ferreira & Seite Makgai (Editors)

Embark on a captivating journey through the enchanting world of time-series analyses with Fiction and Fable: Tales of Time-Series. This extraordinary collection of short stories, penned by undergraduate students from the prestigious Department of Statistics at the University of Pretoria, brings to life the fascinating concepts taught in the time-series analysis syllabus. What began as a mere optional assignment evolved into a remarkable book of stories that blend the realms of creativity and statistics. Stories such as The Shepherd and the Wolf or The Tale of the ARMA Warriors transport readers to the moments of comfort and delight that fables and fairytales hold for all. The fusion of imagination and analytical thinking invites readers to explore a magical realm where mathematical models intertwine with storytelling. Join us on a literary adventure where Fiction and Fable meet the captivating world of time-series, proving that the magic of storytelling knows no bounds.

I SEE YOU

The casebook for the Institute for Imbecile Children, and the casebooks of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum constitutes one of South Africa’s largest archived records for people with intellectual disability (PWID) who were institutionalised from 1890 to 1920. In I See You I testify how the viewing of the casebooks’ content and photographs gave rise to a personal recognition of the personhood of the PWID. My testimony takes the form of poetry that is composed to honour and memorialise each individual person who is included in this album.

Rory du Plessis is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Studies at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. He is a NRF-rated scholar, the co-editor of the academic journal, Image & Text, and author of Pathways of Patients at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890 to 1907 (Pretoria University Law Press 2020).

THE PUBLIC ART OF COMMEMORATING THE WARS OF RESISTANCE: A BRIEF LIMPOPO CHAPTER

Author: Mahunele Thotse

 

This book examines sites in Limpopo Province where the history of the Wars of Resistance is represented on the landscape through public art that celebrates the traditional leaders who fought those wars. The Public Art of Commemorating the Wars of Resistance: A Brief Limpopo Chapter explores the overlapping and oftentimes complex relationships between identity, memory, heritage and the cultural landscape. The book draws particular attention to the powerful role that statues, honouring traditional leaders who fought wars of resistance, have played in saving their peoples’ land from colonial conquerors. This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the memorialisation of the Wars of Resistance in South Africa. The book further provides a stimulating introduction to the issue of how South Africans commemorate the Wars of Resistance.

SOUTH AFRICA’S EASY ELECTION GUIDE: WHO TO VOTE FOR IN 2024

Author: Nickolaus Bauer

 

South Africa’s most important election since 1994 may deliver the first coalition government in a democratic South Africa. However, as political parties vie for the votes of South Africans: How do citizens make the choice of where to put their mark? Who can they trust to give voice to their aspirations and help rebuild and grow Africa’s most developed economy to benefit more people in the world’s most unequal society?

news

UP’s ‘HumanEATies’ cookbook wins International Gourmand Award

Date: December 13, 2023

HumanEATies topped the list in the B22 category, which recognises free books published by university presses. Dr Heather Thuynsma, Executive Director of UP’s Emerging Scholars Initiative (ESI) Press, which published the book, recalls the team’s reaction upon hearing the news.

“The ESI Press team was on a team Zoom call when we found out that the book had won,” she says. “We could hardly believe it. Needless to say, everyone did a little happy dance at their desks!”

UP’s ESI Press launches free book on history of De Aar 

Date: June 23, 2023

The Emerging Scholars Initiative Press (ESI Press), based at the University of Pretoria (UP) Faculty of Humanities, recently published a book on the history of the town De Aar in the Northern Cape.

The book, De Aar: Lines of Architecture in the Making of a South African Town (1902–1977), was written by Dr Giorgio Miescher, Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland’s oldest university. Dr Miescher launched the book in De Aar on Monday 19 June 2023 at the Olive Schreiner House.