Dr Kira Erwin, a Senior Researcher at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology (UFC@DUT) was recently awarded a C2 rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF), to acknowledge the quality and impact of her research outputs.
She is grateful to DUT for providing a supportive space for the UFC to explore Participatory Action Research (PAR) and engaged scholarship on broad urban issues.
“Since I joined the UFC seven years ago, I have carried out research of this kind on a number of issues: state delivered housing; how young people are reimagining ideas of race and racism in schools; migration, inclusion and gender; building inclusive ocean governance that takes into account the livelihoods and cultural heritage of subsistence fishers; and our latest project that co-designs zero-waste to landfill solutions with informal workers in the markets of Warwick,” said Dr Erwin.
Speaking about her C2 NRF rating, Dr Erwin said it illustrates that many of DUT’s academic peers agree that doing PAR and community engaged research is an important part of university scholarship. She added that she felt humbled to get this award.
The highlight of her career is working with the incredible team of researchers, students, civil society actors, participants and creative performers who have come together to think through, research and take action around complex issues in their city.
“While I trained as an Urban Sociologist I have been very privileged to learn from other perspectives, both every day and theoretical lenses in these interdisciplinary projects. I have had many generous colleagues (a big thank you to the whole UFC team), and project partners to thank for these teachings. Although sometimes getting personal awards when you work in a very collaborative research space with many others without whom the research would not be as rich or indeed possible, can feel a little strange. The NRF ratings do however primarily use our academic publications as their assessment tool,” indicated Dr Erwin.
Along the way, she said she had to learn to publish from the narrative data embedded in broader social and environmental justice projects. For researchers, Dr Erwin emphasised the importance of finding more creative ways to disseminate research findings so that their partners and the general public can also engage with the findings.
Her rating will last for a five-year period and she hopes to contribute more to the DUT community engagement space. Dr Erwin plans to offer seminars and workshops for postgraduate and emerging scholars interested in community engaged research that moves beyond the push for publications into real action and change in society.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Professor Sibusiso Moyo mentioned that as part of DUT’s ENVISION2030 Sustainability perspective, having NRF Rated Researchers is one of the ways DUT can create sustainable research and innovation enterprise, with a capacity to contribute to the doctoral skills training and mentoring of the next generation scholars.
“Our objective is to ensure we have optimised organisational capabilities with the ability to align and leverage DUT’s resources to realise our stated goals and objectives in the Research and Innovation Blueprint. Congratulations once again to Dr Kira Erwin on this achievement!”
The NRF Ratings categories:
A – Leading international researchers
B – Internationally acclaimed researchers
C – Established researchers
P – Prestigious Awards
Y – Promising young researchers
In total DUT has 12 rated researchers who recently obtained the NRF ratings which are set to be valid for the next five years until 2027.
Pictured: Dr Kira Erwin.
Simangele Zuma
