Prof Tina Steiner and Prof Louise Green (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) are pleased to have been invited to the upcoming Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Humanities Book Award ceremony, where their outstanding achievements will be recognised.

Although the first prize has gone elsewhere, their works received an honorable mention as among the top three most outstanding academic publications of the year. Prof Steiner and Prof Green are both academics in the Department of English. Prof Steiner’s book, Convivial Worlds: Writing Relation from Africa (2021), explores everyday forms of conviviality in fiction and life writing from Eastern and Southern Africa to highlight the significance of repertoires of repair in a world broken by asymmetrical relations of power. Prof Green’s Fragments from the History of Loss: The Nature Industry and the Postcolony (2020) considers climate change and environmental crisis from the perspective of South Africa, to show how the long history of imperial and colonial exploitation continues to shape responses to the current crisis.

National recognition of this kind is a rare event, and both academics were delighted to learn that their work had been selected to be included in the top three. Prof Steiner said, “I am grateful to ASSAf for this encouraging validation.” Prof Green said, “it’s a privilege to have such an outstanding team of interdisciplinary scholars read my work.”

The ASSAf awards ceremony, to be held in Cape Town on the 30th of March, will be a memorable event in which academics from South Africa will gather to honour the best in the field. Prof Steiner and Prof Green look forward to continuing their research and writing, exploring new ideas, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the humanities.