Entering its second day today, Tuesday 8 December, the SANORD Conference’s plenary session addresses issues of education and equality, or inclusion and exclusion in the higher education environment.

Professor Vigdis Broch-Due of the University of Bergen in Norway delivered a keynote address entitled “Education and the Productivity of Equality”.

Professor Broch-Due is a social anthropologist and currently holds positions as Professor of International Poverty Research in the Faculty of Social Science and Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropolgy at the University of Bergen. The author of several books on poverty and aspects of social identity in Africa, she has also participated in making television documentaries around these issues, most recently a series titled Producing Poverty and based on research in Kenya, India and Colombia. She has also been head of the research program on poverty at the Nordic Africa Institute and was part of a selected group of researchers appointed by the Commission for the European Union to assess their poverty alleviation policies and efforts.?

Professor Peter Vale, the Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics at Rhodes University spoke on the topic “Inclusion and Exclusion in Higher Education: Humanities in South Africa.”

Professor Vale’s research interests include Security Discourses, Social Theory, and International Relations. He has just completed the editing of a book on Social Theory in South Africa with Heather Jacklin of the University of Cape Town. He is working on a number of other research projects: these include a cartoon history of South African foreign policy (with Jackie Kalley and the late John Barrratt), the history of thought in South African International Relations (manuscript), and selected journal pieces together with colleagues from the Departments of Sociology, Politics and Journalism at Rhodes.

His chief extramural activity is as co-chair (with Jonathan Jansen) of the Consensus Panel on the Future of the Humanities in South Africa organised by the Academy of Science of South Africa.

The keynote addresses set the scene for subsequent parallell sessions intended to interrogate issues of human rights, the need to relate to other voices, and whether inclusion can be enhance through information and communication technologies.

During the afternoon sessions delegates present and debate around policies of inclusion, issues of gender and socio-technical approaches to higher education.

Picture Caption: (L) Professor Vigdis Broch-Due of the University of Bergen in Norway (R)Professor Peter Vale, the Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics at Rhodes University