The Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR), Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, officially opened their new space on the 24^th January 2017 with a high tea celebration. The Centre (constituted formally in 2015) has found its new home at the top floor of the Student Centre building on Groenkloof Campus.

On a transdisciplinary level the CSR has multiple collaborative partners to build evidence-based knowledge on innovative adaptations given chronic and cumulative adversity in a global south, postcolonial and emerging economy context with structural disparity challenges. With regards to education research, the CSR builds multidisciplinary knowledge on positive learning outcomes in high adversity school settings.

The space was designed by University of Pretoria Campus Architect (Ané Genis), with Yzelle van den Berg as project manager, and Mari Dreyer overseeing the interior furnishing. The event was attended by Prof Susan Adendorff (Director: Facilities), as well as Mr Nicolaas Bester (Deputy Director: Planning and Administration).

Following a welcoming by Prof Liesel Ebersöhn (Director of the CSR), the space was officially opened by the Dean of the Faculty of Education, Prof Chika Sehoole. He affirmed commitment of the Faculty of Education to transdisciplinary research – as enacted through CSR research activities. In her commentary, Prof Human-Vogel, Acting Head of Department of the Department for Educational Psychology, stated that the time was ripe for scholarship on resilience.

Besides being residence to academic and administrative staff connected to resilience research, the CSR-space also provides a home to postgraduate students and visiting professors building knowledge in this field, as well as serves as physical domain to store resilience-datasets - digital object identifiers (doi’s) are being assigned to these for research on extant data. Other entities housed within the CSR-space include the World Education Research Association Secretariat, the South African Journal of Education, as well as the Faculty of Education Ethics Office.

Resilience@UP Greetings

Prof Liesel Ebersöhn

Director: Centre for the Study of Resilience

Secretary General: World Education Research Association

Full Professor: Department of Educational Psychology

Faculty of Education

University of Pretoria

Pretoria