Caribbean Economic Thought: Advances, Retreat, Current Challenges

The reflections provided in this article were presented in the 4th Sam Moyo Memorial Lecture, delivered at the SMAIAS/ASN Summer School in January 2021. The article focuses on the critical tradition of economic knowledge and thought about the socio-economic development of the Caribbean, which began in the last decades of the colonial era. The advances made through the early Independence period were concerned with the problems of individual countries and the region as a whole. The objective was to improve the material economic welfare of the broad masses of Caribbean people while generating the requisite economic growth to sustain an improvement in the general conditions of life. From the thought of W. Arthur Lewis to the Plantation Economy theorists and subsequent critiques, a rich critical tradition emerged, only to be displaced by the onset of the debt crisis and neoliberalism. This article reviews the main elements of this critical tradition, its advances, and retreats, as well as the new challenges presented to it today.

Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture 2020: Re-engineering truth and certainty in occupational therapy

The Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture is awarded on an annual basis to a member of high standing within the occupational therapy profession. The 2020 lecture was delivered by Dr Jenny Preston MBE who contested the underlying assumptions of truth and certainty by considering how we generate, create and understand knowledge within the occupational therapy profession. Through the principles of process re-engineering, Dr Preston sought to define, analyse and identify how we interpret and apply that knowledge within our broad understanding of truth to capture the impact of occupational therapy. Finally, Dr Preston attempted to design and develop a future state in which evidence and practice are entwined to create the best possible outcomes.

'Teacher parent co-production to develop new educational models for the pandemic - and beyond' - Professor Helen Minnis

Recorded via video link for the Emmanuel Miller Memorial Lecture and Conference 'Child and adolescent mental health: what have we learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic? Looking back, Looking forward' on Friday 19 March 2021. ACAMH members can now receive a CPD certificate for watching this recorded lecture.

A celebratory turning alone to Wentzel van Huyssteen: An academic appreciation

In appreciative celebration of Van Huyssteen’s contribution as international pattern-setter for the theology-science dialogue and especially on the nature of theological reflection and rationality, the article focuses specifically on the South African context and three contributions that Van Huyssteen made in engagement with Johan Heyns over a period of almost four decades. From his critical commentary on the Heyns/Jonker (1977) book publication Op weg met die Teologie through his Teologie as Kritiese Geloofsverantwoording (Van Huyssteen 1986) to his delivering of the Johan Heyns Memorial Lecture (2016), the two key theological-methodological issues that he consistently addressed were truth and progress. Van Huyssteen’s basic concern throughout his academic career was on why the theologian would try to speak publicly, and the ever accompanying question on who would care to hear his voice. In critical engagement from a South African context with Van Huyssteen’s answer to the question that he poses, it is argued that Van Huyssteen in his very sophisticated post-foundational approach, characterised by contextuality and transversality, ultimately does not methodologically take care of the constitutive interdisciplinary significance of affectivity of embodied persons in our publicly cognitive sensemaking of our respective lifeworlds, deeply characterised by pluriversality.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article explores and critically discusses the initial Critical-Realistic approach that later developed into a post-foundational approach by Wentzel van Huyssteen. The discussion is consciously restricted to his South African publications and covers the fields of the philosophy of science, systematic theology, philosophy and evolutionary theology within contemporary science-theology discourses.