Ground-Breaking Youth Study Earns UKZN Researchers Prestigious European Grant

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The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Professor Lauren Dyll and Dr Mary Lange, from the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) in the College of Humanities, are part of an international team that has been awarded €2.4 million in European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant funding.

This prestigious award supports a major five-year research initiative called REACT - Reimagining Activism, Communication and Trajectories of Participation in the Global South.

The project, which launches in January 2026, is led by Professor Thomas Tufte, Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at Loughborough University (London).

It forms part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, which supports bold, curiosity-driven research that can lead to major scientific and societal breakthroughs.

REACT will explore how young people (aged 18-30) across the Global South navigate uncertainty, respond to systemic inequality and exclusion, and engage in efforts to drive change. It will focus on in-depth case studies in five countries - namely Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, and South Africa - and include a comprehensive survey of 12 000 youth in 20 countries.

Drawing from communication for social change, cultural studies, urban research, and critical development theory, the REACT team will develop a new interdisciplinary framework known as COMPAS (Communication, Participation and Social Change). The research will be enhanced by creative workshops, urban manifestos, and scenario-building activities that aim to amplify youth voices and promote inclusive societal futures.

The South African project co-ordinators will collaborate with a non-governmental organisation, South Roots International, which works with youth in the Cape Flats. CCMS has collaborated with them previously and will engage with them on a project that will not only contribute to global knowledge on youth and activism in the Global South but also deliver practical outputs that benefit individuals and communities.

Speaking on the projects impact, Dyll said: “I am honoured to be a team member on the REACT project, that I believe will contribute crucial research for our current global context; fraught with conflict and contradictions, but also…hope. Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire theorised hope as an essential, existential, and ontological need; a concrete imperative for human existence and the struggle against oppression. The REACT project will engage directly with youth, as the ‘ambassadors of hope’, so that we can learn how they communicate and mobilise themselves to hope for futures that champion gender equality, social justice, climate justice and peace.”

As the South African partner, UKZN’s CCMS will play a vital role in the success of this global initiative. The project reinforces UKZN’s commitment to impactful, socially engaged research and international collaboration.

Words: Jennene Naidu

Photographs: Supplied