Postgraduate Conference 2017 - awesome experience

One of the ponds on the Spier wine farm near Stellenbosch 

The postgraduate forum for Southern Africa held its' first annual meeting during the Postgraduate Supervision Conference at Spier, near Stellenbosch in South Africa last week. This is an interest group in support of South African postgraduate schools and centres, initiated during the previous two Postgraduate Supervision conferences held in 2013 and 2015 also at Spier. The chair is Henriette van den Berg from the University of the Free State and the secretary is Bloodless Dzwairo from DUT. We hope the see and hear great things from this forum in the coming months. 

While the next Postgraduate Supervision Conference in South Africa will only take place in 2019, the sister conference will, as usual, take place next year in Australia. The 13th biannual Quality in Postgraduate research (QPR) conference will take place on 17, 18 and 19 April 2018 in Adelaide. Just as its sister conference that takes place every second year at Spier which is a wine farm, the Australian conference takes place at the National wine Centre in Adelaide. So keep an eye open for the call for participation in next years conference in Australia.

This year, here in South Africa at the six Postgraduate Conference, 160 people gathered to participate in the pre-conference workshops, listened to keynoted addresses by Nick Hopwood (Australia), Suzanne Otega (USA), Kirsti Pyhalto (Finland) and Amaleya Goneos-Malka (South Africa) and enjoyed the conference dinner at Nooitgedagt wine farm. International speakers came from England, Israel, Sweden, Canada and Rwanda. The conference also attracted speakers and participants from all over South Africa who were interested to hear, see and learn more about the Spaces, Journeys and New horizons in postgraduate supervision. This was our third attendance of this conference and we are building networking ties with other participants whom also tend to come back for more every second year. Hope to see you all back in 2019, or at Adelaide in 2018.