Origins
The LINK Centre's origins are in the mid-1990s, at the beginning of South Africa's democratic era, during a period that saw the establishment of many new education and training entities in the country. The Centre's activities commenced in 1996 as the ICT4D programme of the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ Graduate School of Public and Development Management (P&DM) (today's ). In 2000, the ICT4D programme evolved into the Learning Information Networking Knowledge (LINK) Centre, a unit of P&DM.
In 2011, LINK moved from P&DM to the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ Faculty of Humanities, in order to take advantage of that Faculty's research-rich environment, and joined the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ School of Literature, Language and Media (SLLM). In addition to joining SLLM, LINK was a founding member of the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ launched in 2016 as the brainchild of Prof. Barry Dwolatzky, who passed away in 2023. Dwolatzky was an important and unwavering supporter of the work of the LINK Centre. (.)
Research and Publications
The LINK Centre's core research themes are as follows:
A core LINK contribution to fostering South African, African, and Global Southern research on knowledge economy matters is the Centre's publication of its accredited, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal,
In addition, LINK team members publish research reports, policy papers, journal articles, book chapters and books, and LINK Associate Justine Limpitlaw compiles, and makes freely available, the South African Electronic Communications Law Digest.
See Publications.
Degrees and Short Courses
LINK offers three postgraduate degrees and several short courses, including courses provided in LINK's capacity as an Training Centre. The LINK Centre's degree programmes comprise:
The current LINK Centre short courses are:
Partnerships and collaborations
LINK partners and collaborates with numerous entities, at Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ University; elsewhere in South Africa; in the SADC region; at African regional and continental levels; and at Global Southern and global levels. In recent years, key partners and collaborators have included:
