International recognition for two Wits University academics

Professor Glenda Gray

Top 100 most influential people

Professor Gray was named in Time magazine’s Top 100 list of the most influential people in the world, published this week. She joins Wits paleoanthropologist, Professor Lee Berger, who on this list in 2016.

Gray has pioneered advances in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, which saved thousands of lives. In 2013, she received the Order of Mapungubwe, one of South Africa’s highest orders awarded by the Presidency, for her work. Gray’s Alma Mater awarded her an honorary degree in 2016.

She is an alumna of Wits Medical School and an Associate Professor in the School of Clinical Medicine at Wits. She established and now directs the Wits Perinatal HIV Research Unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and is involved in HIV vaccine research. She is currently President and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council.

Elected to Academy

Professor Achille Mbembe’s election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recognises his scholarship within South Africa, the continent and beyond. He and other new members will be inducted into the Academy at a ceremony on 7 October 2017 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Mbembe is a professor in the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). He is an A1-National Research Foundation rated academic and has written extensively on African history and politics. He is a sought-after and respected public speaker and commentator in his field.

He was born in Cameroon and obtained a PhD in History at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989 and a DEA [Diplôme d'études approfondies – postgraduate qualification] in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris). Amongst multiple publications, his ‘On the Postcolony’ was published in Paris in 2000 in French and the University of California Press published the English translation in 2001. Wits University Press published a new, African edition in 2015.

Mbembe joins Professor Adam Habib, vice-chancellor and principal of Wits, as a member of the Academy. Habib was elected in 2016.