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A year since the establishment of the University of Western Cape’s Chair in Media Inclusion and Diversity, Professor Sisanda Nkoala says it has been an exciting journey.

Prof Nkoala, a former television journalist who, alongside Prof Leo Van Audenhove from the  Vrije Universiteit Brussel(VUB) in Belgium, holds the Chair, said the intention was to “foreground” media as an area of research, postgraduate supervision, and also potentially for teaching and learning in the long term. 

Prof Nkoala, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, said there was a high level of engagement with students with some interesting projects and international collaborations.

“We've got visiting scholars who are coming next year through the University of Missouri South African Education Program (UMSAEP). And it's been a very active year, given the fact that we've only been around for a year,” she said.

Prof Nkoala said one of the initiatives was a partnership with the South African National Editors Forum for a joint symposium for young women who wanted to enter the media space.   “The intention was to really prepare women students who are thinking about leading in newsrooms as to what to expect,” she said.

Another significant activity, said Prof Nkoala, was public engagement in projects related to media literacy. “We held a round table last year with different stakeholders, the education department, and some civil society organisations, to try and map out what media literacy interventions South Africa could implement. I think that there is going to be a follow-up meeting coming up this November to pull those ideas together. It's going to be key players within the media sector,” said Prof Nkoala.

UWC students, who are Master’s and Doctoral Fellows within the chair, she said, were doing very well and were involved in several projects related to digital media platforms, including Netflix and social media, with most of them presenting their research at conferences. “One student is even going to Kenya as part of work related to her research. Six others have presented at local conferences. We've also run initiatives with the Association of Independent Publishers, training community journalists and students on newsletters,” said Prof Nkoala.

She said that with the increased move towards digital media, media workers need upskilling. For that reason, there’s been a partnership between the media professionals and UWC. These projects attracted increased funding and will also see two academics from the University of Missouri visiting UWC in 2026, which Prof Nkoala described as “exciting”.

“One is involved in political communication, and the other in science and climate change journalism. It will be research projects that will hopefully bear fruit and just strengthen the collaboration between UWC and the University of Missouri,” she said. 

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Prof Nkoala said because UWC never offered media or communications as a standalone offering, it was difficult at the start. “It was a little bit tricky in the beginning as to where to locate, especially external postgraduate students, who don't have a foundation in some of the established fields within the institution, and we had quite a lot of interest. That was challenging because one of the things that we wanted to do was to bring in and increase postgraduate supervision capacity,” she said.

Despite these initial hurdles, she says the buy-in from various departments in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities made it possible to formulate interdisciplinary research projects. “Because media is interdisciplinary, we have postgraduate fellows in History, Sociology, and African languages, so that students who want to study and research media in any area within the faculty can do so,” said Prof Nkoala.

Another challenge, she said, was to solidify cross-faculty connections in light of Prof Van Audenhove’s focus on e-inclusion and social innovation. Prof Nkoala said trying to establish that connection between the humanities aspects of media and the access to Information Systems was a challenge due to some perceived disciplinary boundaries.

But she expressed optimism, identifying issues related to media literacy, which was one of the Chair’s focus areas, as a cross-cutting topic with great global relevance.

Prof Nkoala said the goal for the Chair’s second year is to give students more opportunities, like conference participation and working on research papers. She said the second area of focus for the next year is to strengthen international collaborations, and thirdly, to strengthen the involvement with some of the VUB colleagues.

Prof Nkoala said she realised how central the media is to society. “The questions we ask around artificial intelligence and information integrity - at the centre of those questions, is the media and how it's being used to communicate,” she said.

“It has implications for democracy and the economy. So it has made me think that going forward, even this Chair or the work that we do should really be transdisciplinary. We've seen that because the projects that have evolved have been so welcomed by the industry.

“There's a need to think beyond traditional media studies and theories towards something that actually has a tangible impact on society and that involves a community to a greater measure,” said Prof Nkoala.