Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of the Witwatersrand)

Established by Deborah Posel in September 2001 WISER is an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences in South Africa. The institute draws on a history of advanced interdisciplinary research at Wits that dates back to the late 1960s, but over the last decade, in particular, it has pursued five main objectives with distinctive energy and enterprise. These are: to foster independent, critical inquiry into the complexities and paradoxes of change in South Africa; to conduct this enquiry by drawing intensively on comparative international research especially from the African continent; to foreground the global theoretical significance of WISER’s research agenda; to combine aesthetic and social scientific analyses; and to provide an institutional space that strengthens the scholarly dialogue between South African researchers and academics in the rest of the world.