2019/20 Research and Innovation Report

In 2019, the University reviewed progress made in implementing its decadal Vision 2020 strategic plan and looked ahead at developing a fresh blueprint for the next decade to inform the Vision 2030 strategy. As part of these processes, Council approved the institutional research and innovation strategy during 2019, which
includes intensified efforts to ramp up research output, productivity and impact as a key dimension of the University’s reputation and sustainability.

To this end, it is pleasing to note that the research publication outputs of the University increased by 11% from 429 in 2018 to 474 in 2019. This contributed to the total weighted research output units of the University remaining stable at 1027 from 2018 to 2019, in spite of a decline in master’s and doctoral enrolments and research output units over the past two years. As a crucial precondition of revitalising the academy, the University is exploring strategies to expand the pool of postgraduate students through improved financial support and expanding postgraduate supervisory capacity cross all faculties.

As a comprehensive university, Mandela University is poised to facilitate the convergence of inter- and transdisciplinary “blue sky” and applied research as a centrepiece of progressive scholarly inquiry in response to the major challenges of our time, such as poverty, the burden of disease, global inequality and environmental degradation. This is part of a broader strategy to reconfigure the
University in alignment with a reimagined and non-paternalistic paradigm of engagement that can more meaningfully engage with, and contribute to, alleviating human precarity.