Since his appointment as Head of Economics Department in 2009, Professor Lumengo Bonga-Bonga has focused on sharpening the quality of research interests and outputs of his 33 academic staff members.
Almost every academic staff member is currently involved in some research activity.
Already there have been outstanding achievements. Last year Associate Professor Alain Kabundi scooped the Vice-Chancellor’s award for the best young researcher.
The department also added to its winnings the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for the best teacher in 2010, which was awarded to Mr Arnold Wentzel.
“It’s unprecedented to have one department winning the two prizes,” says Bonga-Bonga.
He sees the University of Johannesburg’s research output ranking climbing to the top three within the next ten years, from sixth place currently.
In its recent strategic meeting, the Department of Economics and Econometrics came up with a new vision: “to become the leading economics department in South Africa. “ Bonga-Bonga says the vision is “quite ambitious but realistic.” He says it’s his responsibility to gear the department toward that direction. “Research output is one of the elements to realize our vision. Through embracing the growing research culture in the department, I see the research output of the department growing from the current 22 article papers authored or co-authored by staff in 2010 to more than 40 in 2013.”
One of the activities introduced by Bonga-Bonga is the compulsory seminars which staff members attend every Thursdays. During these seminars, departmental staff makes present research articles they are working on, covering a broad range of topics from development economics to financial economics. The seminars also attract presenters from other local institutions such as Wits, UCT, University of Pretoria as well as international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and various universities in the United States and Europe. Another, initiative that is paying off involves research workshops tailored to meet the needs of academic staff. These workshops are run by staff members who are competent in their respective fields, including research methodology and econometrics.
“Some of our staff are publishing in high-ranked journals in economics. We doubled our research from 2008 to 2009. We expect to see a remarkable increase in research output by 2013,” says Bonga-Bonga. So far this year, 13 articles have already been accepted for publication by accredited journals, which is much higher than the number of publications during the same time last year.