UJ secures grant to advance land and agrarian reform in South Africa

The Centre for Sociological Research and Practice (CSRP) within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg (UJ)  has secured a R4 million grant from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).

The grant will advance the implementation of the Sam Moyo Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in collaboration with NIHSS. The grant will contribute towards the development of scholars and scholarship in land and agrarian reform in South Africa and the continent by addressing the gaps in South-South focused land and agrarian policy and scholarship while complementing teaching capacity on land and agrarian subject related areas.

Dr Trevor Ngwane, Director of the CSRP expressed his gratitude and commitment towards the  two- year Fellowship.

”The late Professor Sam Moyo was a great scholar and activist in the fields of land reform, rural development and agriculture. It is a great honour for the Department of Sociology’s Centre for Sociological Research and Practice to be awarded the Sam Moyo Postdoctoral Fellowship by the NIHSS. We greatly appreciate this and will do everything in our power to honour Prof Moyo’s memory by ensuring tremendous success in the implementation of this groundbreaking project.”

The land and agrarian questions remain unresolved across much of the African continent. Prof Sam Moyo was committed to their resolution as scholars and activists. His approach was characterised by an intrinsic link between scholarship and struggle. His penetrating analysis, premised on a careful and systematic collection of empirical evidence, have left a legacy in our appreciation of the complexities involved in overcoming colonial dispossession in an era of global capitalism.

This Postdoctoral Research Fellowship honours Prof. Sam Moyo’s dedicated contribution by providing opportunities for his legacy in scholarship, policy advocacy and activism, institution building and networking to remain alive by drawing on his tradition of evidence-based research into land and agrarian questions.

The Programme will support full-time Fellows addressing the following broad research themes:

• Land and the National Question
• Land Reform
• Agrarian Change
• Land and Agrarian Social Movements
• Land and Agrarian Research Networks in the global south
• Agricultural and Food Policy
• Food Security and poverty reduction