During 2001 emphasis in the Faculty of Humanities was on the rationalisation of the undergraduate offering, the expansion of postgraduate training, comprehensive quality control and quality improvement, development of the research culture, and on the facilitation and stimulation of research and research output. A number of faculty committees were established in order to drive some of these initiatives and, as far as research was concerned, both the Research Committee and Ethics Committee played an important role. Members of the different faculty committees include the three Research Co-ordinators as well as additional representatives from the three Schools in the Faculty (Social Sciences, Languages, and Arts). One member of the Faculty's Executive Management assumed a special responsibility for the Faculty's research initiative.

The Faculty's Research Committee launched a number of new initiatives aimed at stimulating research activity in the Faculty as well as the delivery of subsidised research output. These included international exchange programmes, improved support for the preparation of funding applications, research days for discussing both the difficulties and joys of research, encouragement for publishing in a wider variety of particularly internationally recognised specialist journals, as well as support for publications that emanate from postgraduate study and training, and direct financial remuneration to the researcher for subsidised output. The Faculty also created opportunities for the recognition of full-length research output in book form, and introduced additional series of seminars complementing those launched during 2000. An initiative is taken within the University to determine criteria for recognising creative output pertaining to inter alia arts and literature, and to improve output in the field of creative writing. Research projects are introduced and activated within the Schools context, focus areas are identified and extended, and new fields of research are explored. The Faculty still places a high premium on individual research, the development of young researchers, and the contribution that subject-specific research may make to the solving of pressing social problems.

During the year under review the Faculty succeeded in arranging international exchange and liaison to a much larger extent than before. Excellent guest lecturers and researchers, as well as a number of postdoctoral fellows were received at the Faculty, and collaboration occurred with a wide variety of institutions in South Africa, the rest of Africa, Australia, (Western, Central and Eastern) Europe, the Middle and Far East, Latin and North America. Members of the Faculty initiated, organised and/or played a leading role in a number of significant international subject conferences. The Faculty succeeded in enhancing its research output, particularly its subsidised research output, while a number of its researchers received research awards and recognition as excellent young researchers and were elected as members of professional associations and boards. A researcher in the field of history, who was a finalist in the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for his book on the Anglo Boer War of 1899-1902, was also the recipient of the Prestige Prize of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverenigings for his research on this topic.

The Faculty considers the administrative load on lecturers, the particular demands of training in the Humanities, changes to the accreditation system for professional journals and the impending introduction of a rating system for social/ human scientists as special challenges to be met in the interest of the research effort during 2002. Research and research output remain one of the strategic focus areas of the Faculty for the coming year.