Rebecca McGuire-Snieckus
Welcome to the University of Namibia
Posted on January 30, 2019
Founded in 1992, the University of Namibia (UNAM) is the country’s largest university. It has 25,000 students across 12 campuses, and is ranked in the top thirty of African universities. It is Namibia’s largest teacher-training provider. It has the following faculties and schools:
- Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Faculty of Economic and Management Science
- Faculty of Education
- Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
- School of Medicine
- School of Nursing
- School of Pharmacy
- School of Public Health
- Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
- Faculty of Law
- Faculty of Science
- Namibia Business School
The language of instruction is English. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has the following departments: Geography, History, Environmental Studies and Tourism Management
- Human Sciences (includes psychology, philosophy, political studies, religious studies, and social work)
- Information and Communication Studies (includes information and library studies, records and archives management, and media)
- Language and Literature Studies (includes main European languages, Chinese, and four African languages)
- Sociology
- Visual and Performing Arts (includes ceramics, drama, fashion, music, texiles, visual arts, and visual culture)
The delegation first met with the university’s External and International Relations Coordinator. UNAM has a relatively small number of incoming international students per semester, mostly European but also students from Asia and North America, but struggles to send many outward students, mainly for financial reasons, so they were interested to hear about GALA’s aim to develop alternative models for student mobility and international engagement. The university’s current research strengths are in STEM (including climate change) but they are keen to develop new research projects in humanities and education (especially early childhood). The delegation was also enthusiastically received by the dean and deputy dean for Humanities and Social Sciences, and heads of department and others from across the faculty. The dean expressed a strong commitment to developing the faculty’s international engagement, and there were expressions of particular interest in visual and performing arts (visiting faculty, research co-supervision, practice-based research), human sciences and social work (global citizenship, social justice, and human rights); creative writing and photography; geography, history and environmental studies (graduate student exchange and summer schools, faculty visits), heritage (they work closely with national heritage council).
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