The Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) announced two new heads for its Department of Economics and School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) respectively.

Prof Gerda van Dijk will lead the School of Public Management and Administration as its new Director, and Prof Nicola Viegi will head the Department of Economics. The two appointments have been effective since 1 March 2022 for a term of four years.

About Prof Van Dijk

Prof Van Dijk was Director of the School of Social and Government Studies at the North-West University before joining the School of Public Management and Administration in January 2018.

She previously worked at Technikon Pretoria (now Tshwane University of Technology), where she was appointed as Executive Director for the South African Association for Public Administration and Management from 2003 to 2008.

Prof Van Dijk is a highly published academic with papers in nationally and internationally accredited journals. She has led numerous research studies commissioned by, among others, the Swedish International Development Agency, the National School of Government, and the South African National Roads Agency (SOC) Ltd. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students, focusing on research methodology, Public Administration Theory and Gender Studies in Public Administration.

As the new Director of SPMA, her vision is to “create a conducive, supportive, and flexible working environment indicative of the strengths each staff member contributes to the team”. This, she says, she can only achieve with the support and team work from her SPMA colleagues.

One of her goals for the School is to increase its footprint and visibility across Africa and position the SPMA as a school of excellence that conducts meaningful, quality-driven research, teaching, and community engagement.

“To achieve this, we will prioritise formalising our international partnerships and tapping into external funding opportunities. We will harness what we have learned from the past two years and create a school where all staff members, students, stakeholders and partners feel engaged and included,” she says.

About Prof Viegi

Prof Viegi joined the University of Pretoria in 2010 as the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Professor of Monetary Economics in the Department of Economics. Prior to this, he served at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, the University of KwaZulu Natal and the University of Cape Town.

He has been a visiting fellow at four international institutions, namely the ESC Toulouse in France, the University of Malta, Fordham University, and the De Nederlandesche Bank. He is currently a research fellow at SARB.

Prof Viegi’s research areas are monetary economics, economic policy theory, monetary fiscal policy interdependence, political economy of monetary institutions, economic policy under uncertainty assets prices and monetary policy, regional integration in Africa, the political economy of government debt, the economics of colonisation and decolonisation, macromodelling for emerging countries, economic growth and institutions.

As the new HOD, he says he plans to continue with the development of the Department of Economics to become a centre of research and training excellence.

He says he will do this by building new research infrastructures, innovating academic programs, and increasing the department’s visibility in national and international debates.

Prof Viegi says he envisions the department as “a place where a new generation of researchers and students find a space to develop new ideas and new ways to deal with the ever-increasing national and global problems: from macroeconomic stability to economic growth, from unemployment to inequality, from energy needs to green transition.”