“People, dedication and care” are the values that sum up his tenure, says Prof Vasu Reddy, who will be leaving UP shortly to take up a position at the University of the Free State.

Professor Vasudhevan “Vasu” Reddy, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria (UP) since 6 August 2015, has left to take up an appointment at the University of the Free State (UFS). He will be Vice-Rector for Research and Internationalisation (including postgraduate studies) at UFS from 1 May.

Prof Reddy has many fond memories of his tenure at UP. “It has been the happiest years of my working life,” he said. “There is something prosperous about UP that I find very attractive. This has become even more pronounced over the years. I’m immensely grateful to the institution.”

He felt “people, dedication and care” could almost be regarded as the brand slogan that captures the spirit of his time at the University. “I have found a deep humanity with everybody, a common purpose, a shared understanding, a recognition and respect of people – and all of that geared towards success.”

Prof Reddy places immense value on the contribution of colleagues primarily because he is not a solo player. He epitomises the collaborative, transdisciplinary approach that universities increasingly aspire to but don’t always achieve.

“It has not been about being a one-man show,” he said about heading a faculty. “My entire approach to leadership has always been to build, facilitate, steer, navigate, inspire and share in the curiosity and enthusiasm.” Of his research, he said: “I have found you start out very individualistically as a scholar, then you realise that you cannot operate as an individual and have to operate collaboratively.”

Even the one cherished possession he will take with him to Bloemfontein is the output of a collaboration.

HumanEATies is a cookbook produced by UP’s Faculty of Humanities and recently published by the Emerging Scholars Initiative (ESI Press). The book is a compilation of recipes that have meaning in the lives of the staff and students who submitted them. The result is 100 recipes that range from morogo (a spinach-based dish) and sorghum naan bread to red wine potjie with idombolo (dumplings) and Ouma Sarah’s ginger biscuits – all tested by final-year Hospitality and Consumer Food Sciences students in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. Prof Reddy contributed to the conceptualisation and the cooking – he is even pictured in the book hard at work in an apron.

“What we have packaged represents distinctive food cultures from our faculty,” he wrote in its introduction.

Prof Desiree Lewis of the University of the Western Cape wrote in a blurb on the book’s back cover that HumanEATies is not a recipe book but rather a cookbook, which conveys “more expansive and richer processes”.

Prof Reddy worked with Prof Lewis and Prof Relebohile (“Lebo”) Moletsane of the University of KwaZulu-Natal on the intra-university programme Critical Food Studies: Transdisciplinary Humanities Approaches, funded by the American Andrew W Mellon foundation.

But how does Prof Reddy – a National Research Foundation B1-rated researcher primarily known for his work on genders, sexualities, poverty and inequalities, and HIV/AIDS – come to research food? “Because I’m a scholar of the social questions that relate to humanistic enquiry,” he said. “I am not interested in insularity. I'm not interested in purely a subject area that specifies a particular set of approaches to a discipline. My approach is rather interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, thinking about moving beyond borders and boundaries, about social questions and human questions.”

Food is also a personal passion. “I’m deeply interested in food, in cooking and ingredients, how food brings people together, how it separates us – all those sorts of issues. They’re deep questions and knowledge. I’ve come out of a particular culture – I’m not saying I’m unique; it straddles everyone – where food is central to whatever one does, in meeting people, in relationships, in being human.”

His other research includes collaborative publications on the state of the South African nation – the third volume is soon to be published.

One of his key projects while at UP is Unsettling Paradigms: The Decolonial Turn in the Humanities Curriculum. He is the principal investigator of the project, which involved eight research-intensive universities, and is now drawing to a close after being extended beyond its initial five years.

“The core of this project was around who we teach, what we teach and how we teach, and the knowledge co-created with students across disciplines, touching on new voices, and new methodologies,” he explained.

One outcome was Rhodes and Wits universities redesigning their philosophy syllabi to emphasise and encourage an African analytical perspective.

Although he will keep his home in Pretoria, where he has lived for 16 years (prior to his tenure at UP, Prof Reddy was Executive Director of the Human and Social Development Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council), he will miss the city’s “purple haze of jacarandas and blossoms in October”.

And he will always remember and appreciate being at UP. “So many wonderful things have happened,” he said. “The fascinating thing about the institution is that it’s always evolving. It’s like it’s unfinished business, always under construction, with new things happening, new goals to work towards and new purposes.”