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Summer School 2026
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Special lectures, tours, excursions and workshops
- Campus Tours
- Demystifying drug discovery: what it takes to bring a new medicine from the bench to the bedside
- Design Thinking 101
- Excursion: the Cape Town Honey Company
- Indigenous tree identification in Newlands Forest
- Legacy Society in conversation: How the paths of a businessman and a scientist crossed and converged in the fight against malaria
- Professor Bongani Mayosi Memorial Lecture
- Professor Stuart John Saunders Lecture: Ageing and Medicine: The Growing Importance of better understanding this relationship
- SS Mendi Memorial Excursion
- UCT Distinguished Alumni Lecture: The State of the Rule of Law
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Literature, Art, Music
- Action and reaction: how Western art evolved
- Adapting Jane Austen
- Art Deco: Spirit and Splendour
- Celebrating the best of Opera UCT
- Copy editing and proofreading: what's the difference. Who performs them?
- Glowfly Dance: Literature as changemaker
- In conversation: Parcel baby: aliases, apartheid and neurosurgery
- In conversation: Writing the family
- Irma Stern: finding her voice
- Jazz legends and their music
- Light,space and time: Physics in art
- Local inspiration: one writer on the Southern Peninsula
- Maria Callas: Prima Donna
- Music and the sensuality of harmony
- Music and the sensuality of harmony(lecture-recital)
- Northern Lights
- Oral historian or vulture? Documenting South African jazz legends after they’ve left us
- Seeing sound, hearing colour: Synaesthesia and the musical mind
- Sienna: Walls of Gold
- The Baroque: the age of kings
- The Italian Renaissance: the dawn of modern times
- The Medici Women
- The influence of the Medieval period on Shakespeare’s plays
- To life, with love
- Writers bear witness: South African English literature 1948 to 1976
- Writers bear witness: South African English literature before 1948
- Writers bear witness: ‘do angels wear brassières?’ The child in post-colonial literature
- ‘What to do with noodle?’: humour in the Victorian novel
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Current affairs, history, philosophy, Politics, economics
- A tug of memory: 21 years in the Karoo
- Along Karoo roads: Faces, Places & Roadside Encounters
- Building a capable intelligence apparatus: a case study of the intelligence operation against Pagad.
- Cecil John Rhodes in love
- Challenges in land reform: a judicial perspective
- Clickbait, chaos and credibility: how too spot fake news
- Darker shade of pale
- Desmond Tutu – Prophet to Power, Pastor to the People, Healer of a Nation
- Developing South Africa's rural areas
- From the top of the game to a new frontier
- Has democracy run its course?
- Hiroshima: eighty years on
- In conversation humanball: performance through connection
- Malema: money, power and patronage
- Mastering others languages: the difference it makes in South Africa
- Metro matters: local reporting and the 2026 Local elections
- Narrative capture: how disinformation builds the architecture of oppression
- Navigating geopolitcal complexity:How did South Afica's G20 stack up
- Navigating retirement
- Navigating the Trump global era
- Reflections on coalition government and national dialogue: thirty years ago and now
- Sand, sweat and satellite phones: reporting war in the 21st century
- South Africa in 2026: priorities for action
- South African Trappist missions: triumph and tragedy
- The 1930s: The decade that changed the world
- The Afrikaner Rebellion 1914
- The Battle of Spioenkop: personalities and outcomes
- The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran had to die
- The age of decay: Ageing, shrinking populations and the decline of civilisation
- The crimes they are changing: exploring South Africa's evolving criminal landscape
- The language of emojis: forensic and legal linguistics
- The truth about Cape slavery: Challenging historical distortions
- Tracking the triggers: inside South Africa's firearm controversies
- Tradewinds: The cosmopolitan Swahili world
- Understanding Africa-China relations
- Unlocking South Africa's socio-economic potential
- Vines, wines and political designs
- We can fix it together - solutions to fixing South African education in a post covid road map.
- Would you like coffee with your coup?
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Medicine
- Current understandings of neurodivergence and practical implications
- Designed for life: the art of human-centred medical innovation
- HIV still matters: exploring pogress, challenges and why collective action remains critical
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Hot Topics in Neuroscience
- Why empathy is breaking healthcare: The neuroscience of compassion
- Adolescent mental health: a better understanding
- Why does that hurt?
- Traumatic stress across generations: epigenetic insights
- Growing mini-brains: how stem cells are helping us understand what makes us human
- How can I find the right person for persistent pain? Navigating the health care system in South Africa
- Music and medicine: integration of health and wellbeing
- The guinea pig club
- The origins of western medicine
- Vula: journeying from an idea in a rural clinic to revolutionising care for 2 million patients
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Science
- A 'just' transition' or just a transition?
- Altered states, dreams and archives
- Big telescopes: exploring the universe from the solar system to the big bang
- Cosmic Africa
- Crazy Crustaceans
- Enterprising echnoderms
- Geological deep time
- Monumental Molluscs
- Our Science ourselves: How gender, race and social movements shaped the study of science
- Out of this world and into the next
- Perceived scientific paradoxes
- Perplexing people
- Stupendpus spiders
- Twentieth century giants of science
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Conservation and Nature
- Cape honey bees: cognitive marvels
- Capturing water
- Chinese and Japanese gardens: differences and similarities
- Human in nature
- Leave Some for the Honey Badger
- Newlands forest: bark harvesting and invasive alien plant species
- Waiting for evolution:The closer the baboons come the more we see ourselves. Are we prepared to look?
- Information Technology
- Practical Courses
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Special lectures, tours, excursions and workshops
- Short Courses
- Friends of Summer School
- EMS Writers Forum
- EMS events calendar
- EMS Outreach
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Previous years
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Summer School 2025
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Free lectures, tours, excursions, workshop
- Vice-Chancellor's lecture
- Professor John Stuart Saunders lecture
- UCT distinguished alumni lecture: South Africa’s second transition and The ‘GNU’: miracle or mirage?
- Campus Tours led by Emeritus Registrar, Hugh Amoore, of the university’s Rondebosch campuses
- Exploring mosses on upper campus
- Design thinking 101
- Indigenous Tree identification in Newlands Forest
- Threats and conservation interventions: the(critically endangered African penguin
- Trees on Upper campus
- UCT and surrounds heritage route
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History, Philosophy, Politics, Current Affairs, Economics
- 2024 Elections: from US to Europe, India and Iran
- Eighty years since D-Day
- Raiders, traders and crusaders: how the Baltic Rim shaped the world
- A socio-political journey through sport
- Africa: a battleground for the Russia-Ukraine war?
- An intellectual tour of Asian popular culture
- Disinformation nation: how smear campaigns and character assassins can shape a country
- Elections 2024: why the DA Mmusi Maimane, Songezo Zibi and Zackie Achmat failed
- Existentialism: origins, meaning and implications
- Fantasy and fact in immigration politics and policy
- How South Africa survived State Capture and the lessons
- How to win the war on corruption
- Italian prisoners of war: the real story of their captivity in in South Africa during World War Two:
- Karoo Roads
- Lessons from the Springboks
- Organised crime on our doorstep: exposing the underworld's extensive reach
- Remembering the Union Castle shipping line
- South Africa's State owned enterprises: From state capture to governance reform
- South Africa's multiparty government: success or realignment
- Sudan: past, current and future
- The challenge of economic development during the financialised phase of capitalism
- The human impact of large-scale disaster
- The world and South Africa beyond 2025: the lates flags, scenarios, and probabilities
- Tony Heard: his life as a journalist
- Understanding Africa-China relations
- Cartooning ructions: when the parallel universe intersects with the real world
- Winnie and Nelson Mandela
- Conservation and Nature
- Information Technology
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Medicine
- Anaesthesia during the Anglo-Boer War
- Chinese medicine
- Hot Topics in Neuroscience
- Implementation of the NHI
- Legalisation of assisted dying
- Pacemakers for hearts save lives
- Palliative care: a fundamental aspect of universal health coverage
- The neuropsychology of Long Covid
- The paradox of a life changed by a lung transpalnt
- Towards a Proton Beam facility for cancer
- Unlocking the mind: exploring the frontier of psychiatric genomics
- Practical Courses
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Science
- Amamzing amphibians
- Are we stardust or nuclear waste?
- Big ideas in the biological sciences:do we have free will?
- Bizarre birds
- Carbon dioxide: the trace greenhouse gas of life
- Climate crises and opportunities in South Africa 2025
- Finding 'old fourlegs' : the recent history of the coelacanth
- How far away is the sun?
- Ice ages: past, present and future
- Incredible insects
- Life history recorded in bones and teeth
- Marvelous mammals
- Rediculous reptiles
- Spaceflight in the 21st century
- The lion's historian
- The marvels of electricity
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Literature, Art, Music
- A month in Provence
- An uncomfortable paradise:a history of dispossession and slavery in Simon's Town
- Art, serenity and conflict: a tale of five cities
- Art, tattoos and extra-ordinary lives: writing trailblazing women
- Ausi told me
- Crooked seeds
- Debussy and impressionism: the triumph of light
- Empire of spies
- Every day is an opening night: a troubadour tells his story
- Hamlet? I saw it on Radio
- How to listen to classical music: enhancing your understanding and appreciation
- J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations
- J.S.Bach reinvented
- Manet: master of the modern idiom
- Mussorgsky: pictures at an exhibition
- One more sea to cross
- Pens versus guns: challenging colonialism
- Phases, phrases and palindromes
- Rising stars in concert: Opera UCT
- Cancelled The Arabic-Afrikaans witing tradition: history and development
- The Frozen North: Inuit art and culture
- The Sonnet
- The South African Musical
- The art of the illustrated book
- The meaning of a life: a South African scientist's tale
- The painted Christ
- The poetry of God
- The young Picasso
- Writers bear witness: the Second World War
- Writers bear witness:between the wars 1919 -1939
- Writing reviews that resonate - book bashing or not?
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Free lectures, tours, excursions, workshop
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Summer School 2024
- Architecture and the built environment
- Conservation and Nature
- Excursions and Tours
- Information Technology
- Law and human rights
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Literature Art Music
- A Wander through the wonder of some fascinating English words
- Art in motion
- Books that changed my life
- Five favourites: Poetry in Person
- From the Cape to Cairo
- I know what I Iike
- Iintrospection and documentation: an overview of dominant strands in contemporary South African photography
- Indian classical music: reverie and understanding
- Landscapes in art: creating heaven on earth
- Mathematics in the plays of Tom Stoppard
- Moulded by the hands of god
- Mozart: myths, mysteries and music
- Notes and curiosities from Florence
- Painting and the eye of the beholder
- Rising stars in concert: Opera UCT
- Robert and Clara Schumann: very private lives
- Schizophrenia: Journey and care
- Sir Abe Baily: a biography
- The first true romantic: exploring the troubled musical genius of Robert Schumann
- The medical road less travelled
- The people's bible: fresco cycles and the golden legend
- The unprecedented media cult of Daisy de Melker
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Medicine
- A tale of two disorders: ADHD and ASD
- Understanding breast cancer
- Anaesthesia: more than just a deep sleep(part 1)
- Anaesthesia: more than just a deep sleep(part 2)
- Body donation: why and how
- Breaking the mould: the real story of penicilin
- Child Abuse: a socio-historical perspective
- Molecular oncology and personalised cancer care
- Painful Osteoarthritis: treating pain that is not all about the joint
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Philosophy, Politics, Current Affairs And History
- 100 years of Radio: from a woman's perspective
- Africa's Nobel Laureates: have we received enough credit?
- Antisemitism in South Africa: a history
- Are you living up to your blue china?
- Boneshakers and b: the colourful history of the bicycle
- Bringing the looters to justice: the case for an international anti-corruption court
- Cartels and Collusion: exposing South Africa's organised crime reality
- Cuba and Africa 1959 -1994: writing an alternative Atlantic history
- Eskom: power, politics, and the (post)apartheid state
- Fantastic fishes
- From Metternich to Merkel: the search for German identity
- Generals Botha and Smuts and the First World War
- How South Africa got out of 80s growth slump: can it o so again?
- Indefinite life extension: is it a good idea?
- Is it still safe to drink tapwater and swim in our waterways
- Lightbulb moments
- Mining the complex legacy of Harry Oppenheimer
- NHI: PANEL DISCUSSION ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE ACT
- Operation Vula: the secret communications network that helped end apartheid.
- Robert Grendon's dream: Remarkable black intellectual, poet, cricketer
- Russian invasion of Ukraine: Ukrainian diplomacy, new era and opportunities for Ukraine and the global south
- South Africa beyond 2024: coalition politics and democratic stability amidst political fragmentation
- The impact of Charles Darwin's visit to the Cape of Good Hope in 1836 on his theory of evolution and natural selection
- The intelligence war in South Africa: 1939 -1948
- The world and South Africa beyond 2024: the lates flags, scenarios, and probabilities
- War on Cuba: Belly of the beast
- What does compassion, or Ubuntu, mean in Contemporary South Africa?
- Who was Napoleon 11?
- Women and Culture in the Renaissance
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Practical Courses
- German for beginners
- Intermediate Italian
- Irma Stern Museum : creative art workshop
- Isixhosa Communication Skills For Beginners
- Italian For Beginners
- Nature writing
- Open book
- Spanish for beginners
- Story development
- Through music into image
- To control or lose control: drawing with ink
- Turkish for beginners
- Write Your Short Story, from concept to completion
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Science
- Asteroid collisions: planetary curse or blessing
- Cederberg rock paintings as a social archive
- Fire and ice: the earth's special place
- Interesting physical phenomena
- Sharks: the perfect predators
- Sustainable seafood production through integrated aquaculture
- The cell: a biologist's peep into an awesome micro-universe of riveting beauty and of life's origins
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Summer School 2023
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Literature, Art, Music
- Guiding Lights: Great Writers From Ancient Greece To Seventeenth Century Japan
- In Conversation
- Jane Eyre
- Even more excellent, little-known books
- Books As Magic Carpets: Why, How And What We Read
- Madness in Greek tragedy: a study of three plays
- Art as a mirror
- Bird and fish: their enduring symbolism
- The Gothic Cathedral
- The great divorce: abstraction and expressionism in the 20th century
- Christo vs Warhol: brilliant art and eccentric personalities
- Dialogues Across Time And Space: A Noisy History Of African Art
- Enchanting the eye and the ear
- Vive la France! A festival of French music through the ages
- Tipping points: the evolution of music
- Film music: the new classical?
- IN CONVERSATION: CHILDREN OF SUGARCANE
- In conversation: the boy who never gave up
- A MORNING WITH IRMA STERN
- Music across time
- Jazz on the lawn
- I Came From The Wilderness
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Philosophy, Politics, Current Affairs and History
- The Long View: Getting Behind The Horror Of South Africa’s Headlines
- The Enlightenment
- Exploring Eastern Thought: Religions, Philosophies And Cultures Of The East
- A ‘history of the Future’ In the 21st Century: Yuval Noah Harari
- Escape From Pretoria
- The Russian War In Ukraine: The Origin, Narratives And Potential Impacts On The African Continent
- 882 Ad: The Origins Of Putin’s Ukrainian War
- The World And South Africa Beyond 2023: The Latest Flags, Scenarios And Probabilities
- The ANC Below 50%: What Is The Road Ahead?
- Anatomy Of State Capture
- South Africa’s Black Middle Class: Past, Present And Future
- Philosophical Lives
- A Voyage Of Discovery: The Trans-siberian Railway
- Napoleon, The Rosetta Stone, And The Deciphering Of Ancient Egypt
- OCEANIC HISTORIES
- FAMILY SILVER: BURIED SEPTEMBER 1939; RETRIEVED OCTOBER 2019
- Medicine
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Science
- Encounters With Table Mountain And The History Of Geology
- Water For Cape Town: 370 Years Of ‘not Quite Enough’
- In The Aftermath Of Extinctions
- Astronomy Highlights With The Meerkat Radio Telescope
- Seeing Black Holes With An Earth-sized Telescope
- Inside Schrodinger’s Cat
- Let’s go tracking in the Jurassic: fossil footprints of Southern Africa
- Where death delights helping the living
- Cape Town’s Rivers And Wetlands: Field Trip
- Laetoli footprints
- Conservation and Nature
- Information Technology
- Practical Courses
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Literature, Art, Music
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Summer School 2025