Associateships for nine senior students

The Postgraduate Studies Funding Committee has announced that nine senior students have been awarded 2006 Research Associateships. They are You-qi Zhuang (chemical engineering), Dali Wei (electrical engineering), Yumna Albertus (human biology), Fleur Howells (human biology), René Brandt (psychology), Rhiannon Thomas (private law), Lesego Moitsheki (chemistry), Oliver Oxtoby (mathematics and applied mathematics) and Samantha Stoffberg (zoology).

These prestigious associateships reward excellent student researchers and recognise and support the work of their supervisors. This is in line with the university's strategic objectives towards transformation and underpins efforts to establish UCT as a research-led institution.

Students registered for the first, second or third year of their doctoral degrees are eligible, as are those who have registered for the first or second years of their master's degrees by dissertation only. Also up for associateships are students who are registered for the second year of a master's degree by coursework and research.

Mellon scholar in Timbuktu

Gathering news on AW Mellon Foundation Fellow and PhD student Mohamed Shaid Mathee proved a little difficult. As soon as the history scholar had delivered his seminar, part of his commitments towards his benefactors, he headed for Timbuktu, one of Africa's remoter and more legendary centres of study.

Mathee's work is part of the UCT-Timbuktu Manuscripts Projects. His seminar, Going to Timbuktu, was aptly titled, featuring a cohort of scholars who have turned their attentions to the Timbuktu manuscript tradition.

They included Jonathan Hodgson, whose Going to Timbuktu presentation explored "ideas and imaginings of Timbuktu" in the English language and popular culture from 1500 to 2006.

Nicola Sienaert looked at two Timbuktu manuscripts, investigating references to the Qur'an and prophetic way of life in arguments about an appropriate response to French colonialism between 1894 and 1960.

Muhammad Khalid Sayed's presentation, History from Below: Fatw?s as a source for a gendered history of Timbuktu, gauged the overarching perceptions of women in a patriarchal Muslim society, arguing that the woman's voice is heard as a subaltern voice through fatwa.

The introduction was by Dr Shamil Jeppe.