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Dr Ryan Nefdt is awarded the 2020/21 HSRC/USAf Medal for Humanities and Social Sciences for Contributions by an Emerging Researcher

March, 2021

The award was started in 2016 by the Human Sciences Research Council to recognise outstanding contributions to the Humanities and Social Sciences. This year it is awarded in conjunction with Universities South Africa.

Very sadly for the Department, Greg Fried has decided to move on to other things. During his 12 years in the department Greg has been a superb colleague. He is a talented teacher and is clearly highly appreciated by his students on the many courses he taught: Great Philosophers; Critical Thinking; the Philosophy of Mathematics; Business Ethics; amongst others. Some of these Greg also initiated. Another great innovation Greg brought to the Department was the annual series of lectures aimed at school children, Foundations in Philosophy. This programme is a resounding success, attracting vast numbers of students onto the campus in the evenings to think about philosophy. On the administrative front he made important contributions as convenor of the PPE programme and, more recently, as the staff representative on the Philosophy Student Council. He served as Deputy Chair of the Senate Animal Ethics Committee for many years, and facilitated important changes in policy guiding animal research. His research interests all have something to do with use of formal methods in our thinking and often to do with their human value. So he writes on topics in rational decision making and also on some of the less well travelled roads in the philosophy of mathematics: on the human value of studying mathematics, on mathematical propositions as God’s thoughts and on beauty in mathematics.

The department will miss him greatly, and wishes him well; we know that, though he may be leaving the philosophy department, he won’t leave philosophy.

For those of you wishing to leave a message of thanks or of good wishes to Greg, please email philosophy@uct.ac.za.

Dr Ryan Nefdt receives a P-rating from the NRF

March, 2021

Ryan Nefdt is one of only three UCT scholars to receive the rare honour of being awarded a P-rating from the National Research Foundation. The P-rating ‘is reserved for young researchers (normally younger than 35 years of age) who have held a doctorate for less than five years and are considered likely to become future international leaders in their field.’

Dr Ryan Nefdt - New Stanford Encyclopedia Author

June, 2020

We are very pleased that Dr Nefdt has been invited to co-write the entry on the Philosophy of Linguistics for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The encyclopedia is one of the most widely used reference resources in philosophy and Dr Nefdt’s invitation is wonderful confirmation of his standing in the profession.

Dr Ryan Nefdt wins The Humanities Faculty Emerging Researcher Award

December, 2019

The Humanities Faculty Emerging Researcher Award is offered in recognition of outstanding scholarly work by emerging researchers who have made significant independent contributions to research in their field.

The winner of this year’s award is Dr Ryan Nefdt from the Department of Philosophy. Dr Nefdt’s research focuses on the nature of language using various languages such as Nguni and Yupik languages as a base. He champions the view that languages are structures which are sensitive to cultural context and community ontology. In 2018, Dr Nefdt was invited to be a professorial visitor at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota where he conducted research on the emerging force of political realism in Africa. His Head of Department remarks that: “Ryan’s research trajectory is, by any standards, quite outstanding, by the standards of the discipline of philosophy, it is breathtaking.” To get a glimpse into Dr Nefdt’s work, see here; here and here.

Dr Greg Fried discusses God with Professor John Lennox

April, 2018

A conversation about God and Science between Dr Greg Fried and Prof John Lennox (19 April 2018, Jubilee Community Church Observatory, Cape Town).

Business Ethics team wins UCT Collaborative Educational Practice Award

September, 2017

The Philosophy Department is delighted to announce that one of its courses—Business Ethics—has won a prestigious UCT teaching award. The Collaborative Educational Practice Award recognises excellent collaborative approaches to teaching and learning at UCT.

Business Ethics is a course primarily in moral philosophy taken by more than 500 Commerce students each semester, and a good number of students from other faculties. The teaching team has striven to offer a course that pushes most students out of their comfort zone, while still supporting their learning as fully as possible. To do this, they have come up with several innovative strategies, including staffing the course with academics from both Humanities and Commerce, which has given rise to a genuinely interdisciplinary course offering.

By working closely together over the years, they have developed a very effective teaching model. One of the team members, Assoc Prof Jimmy Winfield, explains: “many students are put off by abstract theory, so we introduce theory in the context of useful ways to respond to questions in the business world. For example, consequentialism is not taught and examined first only to be applied later, but rather we introduce it as a way to properly understand Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ argument for capitalist economic systems.” 

The team has also been recognised for taking full advantage of the opportunity to develop students’ critical thinking skills, constantly highlighting the value of critical thinking for the business decisions they will make—and moral dilemmas they will face—in future. And Business Ethics students engage with carefully designed learning tools from novel methods of assessment, through innovative classroom technology, to a textbook—sold at other universities in South Africa and internationally—written especially to support the UCT course.

The hard work put in since the course began in 2010 has paid off not only in this award, but also in many positive reviews from students, for example “I valued this course very highly - probably the highest of all the courses I have done so far. I thought the content covered was directly applicable to real life and it encouraged me to live a meaningful life... To me, the topics covered were more important (in meaning) than all the other business science courses I take.”

March, 2017

Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus win National Arts Festival Short.Sharp.Stories Award

July, 2016

Greg Lazarus, the husband-and-wife writing duo of Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus, have been announced in Grahamstown as the winners of the National Arts Festival Award for the Judges’ Choice of Best Story in the annual anthology of stories chosen for the Short.Sharp.Stories awards.

This year’s theme, Die Laughing, drew many entries, twenty of which were chosen for the collection, which will be launched in Cape Town and Johannesburg. ‘This Could Get Messy,’ the winning story by Greg Lazarus, was described by the judges, Karabo Kgoleng, Karina Szczurek and Ken Barris, as ‘a simply wonderful story about love…funny, with its twists and turns, chuckles and sadness.’

According to Lisa and Greg, ‘Our story is about Ilhaam, a passionate and brilliant schoolgirl who has an extensive knowledge of the Koran and a confidential problem involving love, and Gary, a pompous philosopher of mathematics and a man with his own secrets, whom she contacts. Who will see through the other first? Who knows more about love? And what will the outcome be? We enjoyed finding out what happens when this oddly-matched pair interact.’

Greg lectures in UCT’s Philosophy Department. He also co-teaches the Master’s course in Creative Non-Fiction offered by the Centre for Film and Media Studies, and supervises students for the MA in Creative Writing. He and Lisa – who is a writer and writing teacher, educated as a psychologist – have co-written a memoir of parenting, The Book of Jacob (2009), and – as Greg Lazarus – the novels When in Broad Daylight I Open My Eyes (2012) and Paradise (2014), as well as several short stories selected for anthologies.

‘In some ways, fiction writing is quite different from philosophy,’ says Greg. ‘For one thing, it’s important to be explicit and comprehensive in analytic philosophy, while gaps and ambiguity are crucial tools in fiction. For another, philosophy often aims to persuade an audience by means of argument, while it’s frequently better to avoid writing didactic fiction. But we hope that the powerful and enduring occupations of philosophy – including such themes as freedom, goodness and evil, the meaning of life and the nature of reality – help to enrich our fiction writing.’

May, 2016

The Philosophy Department mourns the death, early on the morning of Monday 23 May 2016, of retired colleague, Dr Augustine Shutte. We extend our condolences to his family. 

We remembered and paid tribute to Dr Shutte on the occasion of our annual prize giving. Professor Peter Collins’ address about Dr Shutte can be found  here.

Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy