UCT two acclaimed in festschrifts

UCT's Professors Monica Ferreira and Doug Young were recently saluted for their research in two major international festschrifts championed by a former colleague now based in the United States.

Ferreira, the director of the newly-renamed Albertina and Walter Sisulu Institute of Ageing in Africa (based in UCT's Faculty of Health Sciences), and her 25 years' research into ageing were fêted in a new book, Ageing in Africa: Sociolinguistic and Anthropological Approaches. In turn, volume 16 of the AILA Review published by the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), titled Africa and Applied Linguistics, was dedicated to Young, who is the director of the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Studies and Services in Southern Africa (CALLSA).

Both festschrifts spring from the pair's work with Sinfree Makoni, formerly of UCT's English department and currently professor of linguistics and applied language studies and African and African American studies at Penn State University in the US. Makoni - whose research interests include cognition, second-language acquisition, the role of language in health and in ageing - still collaborates with both Ferreira and Young.

"Monica is appreciated as one of the few individuals to have made a major contribution to gerontology in Africa," wrote UCT's Emeritus Professor Lynn Gillis in Ageing in Africa as he recounted Ferreira's ongoing contributions to the study of ageing since the early 1980s. "I am convinced that in retrospect she will be judged as an esteemed pioneer in the field."

Young is lavished with equal praise by UCT's Dr Rochelle Kapp in her profile on him in the AILA Review. "Douglas Young has played a leading role in establishing, defining and developing applied linguistics and, since the early 1990s, applied language studies as respected academic (sub)disciplines in South Africa," Kapp notes.

"Doug is a pioneer in South African applied linguistics and applied language studies in the area of teaching, research and in developing structures which have enabled the discipline to grow and flourish."

According to Makoni, Ferreira and Young are among the forerunners in their respective fields. "The fact that two international festschrifts have recently been dedicated to UCT scholars says much of the international standing of the university's academics," he observed.

Makoni co-edited the AILA Review festschrift with Professor Ulrike Hanna Meinhof of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, and worked on Ageing in Africa alongside Professor Koen Stroeken of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

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