Gauteng Anthropology

Conference & Papers Call: "Youth, Media and Climate Action:
Reclaiming Narrative Power for Transformative Climate Futures in Southern Africa" Conference.
4 – 5 NOVEMBER 2026

The University of Johannesburg’s Department of Communication and Media and the Centre for Data and Digital Communications invite you to the “Youth, Media and Climate Action: Reclaiming Narrative Power for Transformative Climate Futures in Southern Africa” conference, scheduled for 4-5 November 2026 at the University of Johannesburg Business School in Johannesburg, South Africa.

CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES
🔸The conference aims to foster dialogue among scholars, students, media practitioners, the private sector, civil society, and organizations on youth, radio, social media, poetry, music, film, and digital storytelling related to climate change communication.
🔸It repositions youth as active knowledge producers rather than passive stakeholders, advancing climate justice through narrative, culture, and ethics.
🔸The conference will be an opportunity for scholars, researchers, and
innovators to present research on the following thematic areas and to gather scholars, students, and stakeholders for workshops on climate change communication, adaptation, and mitigation.

Research Thematic Areas:
You are invited to submit research papers and present research work aligned with these five themes:
🔸Climate Change Communication
🔸Youth as Climate Knowledge Producers: Storytelling, indigenous
knowledge, and everyday narratives.
🔸Media, Power, and Voice: Contesting dominant climate discourses.
🔸Digital Media and Climate Mobilization: Social media campaigns and youth networks.
🔸Creative and Cultural Expressions: Poetry, music, film, photography, and theatre.
🔸Successful climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for scaling and replicability
🔸Climate Justice and Inequality: Intersections of race, gender, class, and generation.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Abstracts of 200-350 words, with 3-5 keywords and a 70–100-word biography, should be submitted as a single Word file including name, affiliation, title, and email.
Email your submissions to [email protected]

Key Dates
🔸Call for Abstracts: March - May 2026
🔸Selection and Acceptance: June-July 2026
🔸Registration and Preparations: 01August – 31 September 2026
🔸Full paper submission - 20 October 2026
🔸Conference: 4-5 November 2026

CONFERENCE/REGISTRATION FEE
🔸R1000 (ZAR) for lecturers and stakeholders
🔸R500 (ZAR) for Students.
🔸Early Bird registration by 31 July 2026 – 10% discount for early registration
🔸Group Registration – R1000 (ZAR) discount for a group of 10 or more

NB: Full registration includes access to all sessions, conference materials, and lunch.

Virtual Registration
🔸R700 for lectures and stakeholders
🔸R300 for students

Paper and Conference registration Link: https://forms.gle/ALGJzkMkvSyxa6TA8

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Outputs include peer-reviewed publications, multimedia works, workshops, and strengthened SADC research networks, contributing
to decolonial climate scholarship.

Papers will be published in a special issue of Communicare:
Journal for Communication Studies in Africa
(https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa

Happy Wednesday!

We'd like to congratulate Dr Isis Mesfin and Dr Matthew Caruana on a newly published article in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology titled 'Application of the Chaîne Opératoire and Techno-functional Approaches to Oldowan Cores and Retouched Pieces from Swartkrans and Sterkfontein, South Africa'.

The article applies a techno-functional (also called ‘morpho-structural’) and chaîne opératoire approach to examine cores and retouched pieces from Swartkrans Member 1 Lower Bank (SWT-M1LB) and Sterkfontein Member 5 East (STK-M5E). This qualitative technological assessment of these two assemblages highlights the technical skills of Oldowan knappers in southern Africa more than 2 million years ago.

Please access the paper via the QR code or link below:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41982-026-00254-5

Happy reading!



UJ Faculty of Humanities University of Johannesburg

Africanising Indigeneity: Decolonising Identities, Knowledges, and Resilience in the Anthropocene Resilience-thinking has become a dominant adaptation vision in the Anthropocene. The concept has spread through policy governance, spurred by the need to utilise existing systems to understand and ...

Join us in celebrating Prof Zama Mabel Mthombeni on her new appointment as an associate professor at UJ! A well-deserved achievement and a win for the public administration community. 👏✨

African Studies African Studies is an international, interdisciplinary journal which publishes high-quality conceptual and empirical research relevant to Africa.

Submit your article to African Studies How to submit your paper to African Studies. Share your work with us to maximise your readership and make your mark in your area of research.

🎊🎊🎊

Meet Dr Matshidiso Sello. Demographer. Child wellbeing advocate. Policy researcher.

As Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Development in Africa, she designs large-scale studies on early childhood development, nutrition, and maternal health.

Her participatory approach brings together government, civil society, and academic partners to strengthen systems for children and families.

Join us in celebrating her as part of UJ’s 21 years of Impact in Humanities.

Latest publication from the UJ Department of Anthropology and Development Studies

Rentierism and Class Differentiation in an Informal Johannesburg Settlement

Professor Hannah J. Dawson

Congratulations, to Prof Dawson!

🥳

Rentierism and Class Differentiation in an Informal Johannesburg Settlement Informal settlements are often portrayed as marginal spaces, excluded from formal economies and property regimes — a framing that obscures the social differentiation within them. This article examine...

This week in the UJ Sociology, Anthropology and Development Studies Department seminar series with the Centre for Social Change.

All welcome: in person and hybrid!

Details in the poster below 👇

🙌🏿

Meet Prof. Marlize Lombard. Her research asks, "How did we become human?"


As Professor of Cognitive and Stone Age Archaeology at UJ, she investigates the evolution of Homo sapiens in Southern Africa.

From the Middle Stone Age to the emergence of the human mind, her work weaves together biology, behaviour, and cognition. Watch her insights in The Bow, the Brain, and the Human Mind and The Attention Gap on YouTube.

We are proud to celebrate her as part of UJ’s 21 years of Impact in Humanities.