Good bye to Prof Mike Hough, who will retire at the end of this year after a career of more than 40 years in our department, 30 years of which were spent also as director of ISSUP. Prof Hough’s retirement represents the end of an era in the department and the department wishes to thank him for his contribution to our academic work over a period of decades. Upon his departure ISSUP and CIPS will be merged into a new institute – the Institute of Political and Strategic Studies (IPSA) under the directorship of Prof Sandy Africa. We hope that IPSA will prove a worthy successor to ISSUP and CIPS.

Welcome back to Prof Maxi Schoeman, who was on sabbatical leave from early August until early November. She spent two weeks in the UK teaching in a summer school programme at Oxford University after which she took up a guest research fellowship at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala Sweden. During her time at NAI she worked closely with the internationally renowned African political economist, Prof Fantu Cheru, and with Dr Cyril Obi (Nigeria) and Dr Godwin Murunga (Kenya). Her research focused on a critique of the liberal peace with reference to the security architecture of the African Union, and on the experience of SANDF female peacekeepers in the DRC. During her stay in Uppsala she participated as a speaker, presenter and respondent in numerous workshops dealing with African politics and security, and travelled to Trondheim in Norway to deliver a paper at the annual Nordic Africa Days conference.

From 13 – 20 August 2009, Prof Sandy Africa was a participant on the prestigious Presidential Friends of Indonesia Programme, in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia. The Programme, coordinated by the Department of Foreign Affairs (Indonesia) annually brings together influential academics, business leaders, cultural workers, media workers, and human rights advocates from around the work in an effort to expose them to Indonesian political, cultural, social and economic life. This public diplomacy initiative is intended to strengthen people to people relations between Indonesians and the countries whose representatives participate on the Programme.

Research for the MERCURY project (Multilateralism and the EU in the Contemporary Global Order) has kicked off and the MERCURY team is looking forward to the next meeting in Rome in March 2010. Our department is one of nine international partners in this project. Prof Maxi Schoeman, Prof Gerrit Olivier, Dr Lorenzo Fioramonti, Dr Yolanda Spies, Ms Alida Kok, Mr Julian Kitipov, Mr Casper Claassen and Ms Ina Hugo are involved in MERCURY.

CONGRATULATIONS!
Congratulations to Dr Gerhard Wolmarans on the recent completion of his Doctorate (DLitt et Phil) degree, from the University of Johannesburg entitled An appraisal of the post-1994 ANC-in-government: an application of the political theory of Michael Oakeshott.