a renewed vision for JIAS

JIAS is thrilled to announce the appointment of its new Director, Professor Victoria Collis-Buthelezi. We enter this new chapter with a renewed vision for JIAS as a Global South hub for experimental, groundbreaking, transdisciplinary inquiry and creative practice informed by Black, African, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer emancipatory thought.

“As someone who knows this space, I recognise what JIAS has been and can be. As the incoming Director, I am committed to a renewed JIAS that meets the demands of the future.” - Prof Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi

From our micro-campus in Johannesburg, we offer research fellows, artists, writers, and activists-in-residence space and time to develop new ideas and projects, free from the ordinary obligations of academic and professional life. Learn more about JIAS fellowships here. Cutting across the humanities, social sciences, arts and natural sciences, our new, multimodal research streams offer space and resources for thinking the world otherwise.

Stream I:our Global Blackness project brings together scholars, activists, artists, and collectives who seek to meditate on Blackness as a global category of identification and its local iterations across diverse temporalities and geopolitical locations. Learn more

Stream II:our Digital Justice Invention Lab will launch in 2025 as a space for rethinking digital space and media technologies within a global order of colonial violence and racial-sexual governance. 

Underscoring our renewed vision for JIAS are four key values: Repair, Regard, Community & Connection. We are committed to building a community of scholarship and creative practice, grounded in a Black, feminist, and queer politics of care. Learn more

Recent highlights with David Scott!

 
 
 

Discover the JIAS micro-campus

JIAS at 10 - a journey

JIAS launched in 2015 as a flagship initiative of the University of Johannesburg. Its mandate is to attract and nurture groundbreaking intellectual work, towards reshaping the direction of higher education not only at UJ, but across South Africa, the African continent and globally.

JIAS is one of three Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) on the continent, and a member of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS). JIAS offers five fellowship programmes:

  • Writing Fellowships

  • Creative Writing Fellowships

  • Visiting Professorships

  • Research fellowships

  • Postdoctoral Fellowships

Since its inception, JIAS has supported over 170 fellowships and 350 public events, establishing itself as a key site for critical enquiry and community in Johannesburg. Each Director has brought unique ideas, projects, and value to the Institute. The team at JIAS remains indebted to these visionary individuals for their distinctive contributions, and especially to Prof Bongani Ngqulunga (now Senior Director, UJ) for his ongoing support.