UKZN Hosts International Summer School on “Religion, Healing and Power”

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During the recent mid-semester break, UKZN hosted doctoral students as well as international and local scholars for a week-long summer school.

This international research training group (IRTG) - jointly funded by South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) and Germany’s Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft /German Research Foundation (DFG) - engages in transdisciplinary research, with approximately 32 doctoral candidates and two postdoctoral students under the guidance of 20 principal researchers from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Stellenbosch University, University of the Western Cape, and UKZN. One of IRTG’s aims is to stimulate and support multidisciplinary research in the field of religion and social sciences.

This year’s annual summer school - organised by UKZN Humanities academics, Professor Maheshvari Naidu, Dr Cherry Muslim and Professor Federico Settler, with the support of three doctoral fellows - was hosted at the UNITE Conference Centre. The delegation was visited by UKZN Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Nana Poku, and the Acting Dean of Research in the College of Humanities, Professor Vivian Ojong.

The focus of this year’s summer school was on “Religion, Healing and Power” through multidisciplinary and decolonial reflections, with Professor Nokuzola Mndende affiliated with the Mandela University and Icamagu Institute, and Professor Suvira Ramlall, UKZN Head of Psychiatry, as keynote speakers. The duo shared their respective practices as diagnosticians, also challenging the normative allopathic approaches to health, and mental health by introducing African indigenous and Indian Vedic perspectives and approaches to wellbeing and healing. These two set the tone for a series of panels and workshops where doctoral researchers from the four partner universities reflected on how their research may benefit from and contribute to fast-evolving fields of health, health-seeking behaviours, and self-care, and in particular, how it relates to religion, religious life and beliefs in postcolonial communities.

Two of the six UKZN-based doctoral fellows commented: ‘The Conference was illuminating. The week was filled with warm experiences from which to learn and revisit healing through discourses and odes to be abantu aba philayo nabantu aba pheleleyo,’ which translates to people who are living and people who are wholly human,’ said Ms Vuyolwethu Qinela, PhD candidate in the College of Humanities.

Mr Mlungisi Hlabisa, lecturer in the School of Education and PhD candidate, said: ‘For me, it was the best out of the three summer schools we have had, from the keynote speakers, presentations, to the accommodation, shuttles and food. I was pushed to think and move out of my comfort zone.

‘The speakers, from the first keynote talk with Prof Mndende, challenged our ways of thinking about healing, particularly with regard to Afrocentric ways of healing. Most importantly for me was the confidence of my fellow PhD colleagues when they presented their papers and their responses to questions thereafter. It signified growth necessitated by the support offered in this programme and from the rapport we have created together. For that, I am proud.’

Words: NdabaOnline

Photograph: Supplied