Our UNESCO Chair, Professor Alain Tschudin, is delighted to announce the eighth session of the Research Engagement Dialogue Series (REDS), entitled “On Recognition: Seeing the Humane in the Human”. The event is hosted by the Von Hügel Institute (VHI), St Edmund’s College, and co-hosted by the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University.
In this REDS session, Professor Robert Vosloo (Stellenbosch University) will share his reflections on what it means to recognise our common humanity and our particular ‘storied past’ at a time of misrecognition and disrespect. Drawing on historical examples and fictional narratives, this dialogue will problematise notions of identity and difference and will explore avenues for a more humane life together.
- Event Date: Tuesday 1 December 2026
- Location: Garden Room (in person) and online
Information about the time and registration will be shared in due course.
About Professor Vosloo:
Robert Vosloo is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He studied theology at Stellenbosch University, where he received his Master’s Degree in theology in 1991 (cum laude). He also studied in Utrecht in the Netherlands (1992) and spent time as a visiting researcher at Princeton Theological Seminary (1993). In 1994, he received a doctoral degree in Systematic Theology from the University of the Western Cape. Also in 1994, he was ordained as a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church Durbanville. In 1998, he received a post-doctoral scholarship, which was utilised for a visit to Duke University (1998). Since his appointment at Stellenbosch in 2005, he has lectured widely on invitation, including in the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Scotland, and Australia. He is currently chairperson of the Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology and the editor-in-chief of the Stellenbosch Theological Journal. In the Fall of 2016, he served as the Lester D. Coltrane visiting professor in Religion at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Robert’s academic books include Redeeming Identity: A Theology of Recognition (Fortress Press, 2026), Reading Bonhoeffer in South Africa After the Transition to Democracy: Selected Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2020, with Nico Koopman) and Reforming Memory: Essays on South African Church and Theological History (Stellenbosch, Sun Media, 2017). He is furthermore the editor or co-editor of 13 books [including, most recently, Bonhoeffer and the Responsibility for a Coming Generation: Doing Theology in a Time Out of Joint (T&T Clark Publishers, 2024)].
His research interests include 20th-century South African church and theological history; Reformed theology; philosophical and theological discourses on memory, hospitality, and recognition; and the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Robert is also a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS). Since September 2017, he writes a weekly column on ethical and theological themes for the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger.