GIPCA’s contributions embraced interdisciplinarity and engaged with public spaces in compelling ways and included Uncles & Angels, an interactive dance and video collaboration between choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba and video artist Mocke J van Veuren, and Cubicle, a mobile gallery offering artworks by students and alumni of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Students from the School of Architecture also presented an exhibition of beautiful Urban Resting Places for people to meet.

Released by Advance Music, one of the world’s leading jazz publishers, The Mike Rossi Project was featured at the Kinshasa International JazzKif Festival in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2013, and was accepted for the 2014 Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg. The CD was nominated as one of the top five South African CD releases of 2013 by jazz journalist Don Albert.

Associate Professor Rebekka Sandmeier, director of the SA College of Music, and a German colleague, Dr Dominik Höink of the University of Münster, were nominated for the publication Aufführungen von Händels Oratorien im deutschsprachigen Raum (1800–1900): Texte und Rezensionen in ausgewählten Musikzeitschriften, which will be published by V&R Unipress in September 2014. 

The publication was produced with the help of student research assistants, both in Germany and at UCT (Maike Gevers, Nicole d’Oliveira and Itunu Ogunseitan) and, in addition to its scholarly merit, was chosen because it introduced students to research on Handel. Their research has put facts to what was only guessed at before, and has shown many of these guesses to be incorrect. For instance, it has always been assumed that Messiah was the most commonly performed oratorio, followed by Judas Maccabeus and Israel in Egypt. Messiah’s status has been confirmed – that was no surprise – but in fact the next most commonly performed oratorio was Samson.

Working in collaboration with Associate Professor Deborah Graham and other colleagues from the Cairns Institute at James Cook University in Australia, Dr John-Langba seeks to explore issues around AOD misuse intervention, prevention and treatment, as well as problems related to new types of drugs that are appearing in vulnerable and underserved communities. According to Professor Sue McGinty, acting director of the Cairns Institute, the fellowship has the potential to increase South African expertise in a much-neglected area.

As part of this work, Dr John-Langba, who is also a Research Fellow of the Cairns Institute, visited the Institute in March 2013 and presented a paper which has since been published in the journal International Peacekeeping.

Pande, who has been researching the fast-growing commercial surrogacy market in India (worth US$2,3 billion a year) for several years, turned her work into an interactive performance, with the assistance of a Danish producer and director. The first performance was at the German Sociological Association in 2010, but since then she has played to ordinary theatregoers in Denmark and Sweden, touring 14 cities in the latter country. Pande presented an English-only version in Copenhagen in June 2014, after which she hopes to perform it at the American Sociological Association conference.

As the biggest unregulated market in the world, commercial surrogacy has deservedly received significant media attention. Pande’s research, which involved living in a surrogacy hostel and interviewing several surrogates, sets out to shine a light into the hidden corners of the industry and to set right some of the myths surrounding it – including the belief that the surrogates are passive victims who are exploited by unscrupulous clinics and their clients.

Dr Pande is also working on a book, Wombs in Labour: Transnational commercial surrogacy in India, to be published by Columbia University Press in the USA and Open University Press in India in 2014.