The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) is a joint initiative of the

University of Johannesburg The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is a public university located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The University of Johannesburg came into existence on 1 January 2005 as the result of a merger between the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), the Te ...

(UJ), South Africa, and

Nanyang Technological University The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various inte ...

(NTU),

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Description

Launched on 14 May 2015, JIAS claims to reach beyond the regular teaching and research routines of contemporary higher education by encouraging collaborative and focused scholarly initiatives in both the

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

and

Natural Sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

.http://www.uj.ac.za/EN/podcast/Pages/Thinking-Globally,-Acting-Locally.aspx Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) are involved with research and higher education. They are designed to afford top quality researchers with an opportunity to focus entirely on their central calling in their respective fields, either individually or in collaborative enterprise. JIAS is the first fully-fledged institute of advanced learning in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

’s

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

and

economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

heartland. Being rooted within UJ, and keen to foster UJ’s institutional goals, JIAS also co-operates with all HE institutions in the country. JIAS’ partnership with NTU provides opportunities to unite African and Asian thought and multidisciplinary research. As a guiding principle, the selection of fellows is on the quality of the proposed research and the researchers. In pursuit of this, JIAS seeks out global leaders in their respective fields, including

Nobel Laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

. JIAS operates from a residential facility that is located in the suburbs of

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

. The founding meeting of JIAS, which was jointly chaired by the vice-chancellor of UJ, Professor Ihron Rensburg, and the president of the NTU, Professor

Bertil Andersson Bertil Andersson is a Swedish college administrator and academic who served as the third president of Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Andersson received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science at Umeå University and his PhD and ...

, was held on the day of the JIAS launch. Others in attendance were Professor K.K. Phua, director of the NTU Institute for Advanced Study, Professor

Tshilidzi Marwala Tshilidzi Marwala (born 28 July 1971) is a South African artificial intelligence engineer, a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer and a university administrator. Early life and education Marwala was born at Duthuni Village in the Limp ...

, then deputy vice chancellor (research, postgraduate studies & library) and subsequently its vice-chancellor and principal, UJ, Dr Yu-Hyun Park, president’s office, NTU, and Professor

Peter Vale Peter Vale is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and the Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics Emeritus at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is also an honorary p ...

, who is the director of JIAS. Since 2019, Dr Bongani Ngqulunga has been the director of JIAS.

References

{{Greater Johannesburg, edu Educational institutions established in 2015 Nanyang Technological University University of Johannesburg 2015 establishments in South Africa