RESEARCH INTO THE FUTURE OF WORK SHOWS THAT SKILLS SUCH AS CRITICAL, ANALYTICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING, THE SKILLS TAUGHT IN OUR PHILOSOPHY DEGREES, WILL BE IN HIGH DEMAND.
Top left to right: Prof Rafael Winkler, Dr Dimpho Maponya, Dr Chad Harris, Dr Asheel Singh Bottom left to right: Prof Catherine Botha, Prof Ben Smart, Dr Devon Bailey, Mrs Nicolene Marks
The Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa (CPSA) is a collaborative community of national and international researchers and graduate students spearheaded by Prof Rafael Winkler. It advocates research exploring innovative and original links between phenomenology and contemporary issues in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the Kantian/post-Kantian European tradition and African philosophy. Global collaboration Dr Harris says collaboration with top international universities is vital for building networks. It also benefits students by bringing them into contact with the latest research in their field and making them competitive in attracting research funding. Some of the department’s successes: • Prof Catherine Botha signed the Rome Call for AI Ethics at the University of Notre Dame on behalf of the UJ Vice- Chancellor in 2022. She was invited to the University of Notre Dame to speak on AI Ethics and Policy at the IJCAI - AI for Good Symposium in Southern Africa (2023). • Profs Winkler and Botha hosted the 10th-anniversary conference of the CPSA in November last year, attended by various national and international delegates. • ACEPS has around sixty collaborators from top institutions in Australia, Canada, India, the UK, the US and several African and European countries, which enhance the international standing of the Department’s research, bring revenue to UJ through collaborative projects and international grant applications, boost the international employability of graduates, and bring them closer to decolonising the academy through global dialogues and
efforts towards decolonisation via their links to Global South institutions. • CPEMPH has a research sister centre at the University of Durham that currently hosts five UJ research associates and a visiting Professor. They co-host their in-house journal, Philosophy of Medicine, with CPEMPH- Durham and Pittsburgh University (US), and maintain close research ties with Aarhus University (Denmark), Cambridge, Nottingham and Bristol Universities (UK), Makerere University (Uganda), and Redlands University (US). Navigating an era of disruption In an era of incredible and accelerating disruption, philosophy’s potential to help people navigate this disruption has not yet been adequately explored. Doing so means getting the message about the benefits of studying philosophy to a far wider audience, stated Dr Harris. “Research into the future of work shows that skills such as critical, analytical and creative thinking and problem solving, the skills taught in our philosophy degrees, will be in high demand. These are also the skills where artificial intelligence still lags behind human intelligence,” expanded Dr Harris. “Philosophy will play a crucial role in training the workforce of the future, and the Department of Philosophy wants to be at the forefront of that wave. We want to keep growing in terms of the research momentum we have built in the past few years. We want to be known as a renowned Department for the quantity of its research output and the quality of its research.”
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