Professorship for SAEON scientist Dave Thompson

The scientist at SAEON’s Ndlovu Node, Dave Thompson, has been appointed as Extraordinary Professor in the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management (UESM) at North-West University (NWU), starting 1 April 2024.

In 2013, the NWU and SAEON signed an agreement of participation in the interests of fostering collaboration and cooperation between the two institutions. Dave’s appointment as extraordinary professor is the first official appointment to support this standing relationship.

Extraordinary appointments are made by higher education institutions such as NWU to enhance their existing research expertise and to extend the capacity of a particular faculty, school or research unit. In return, the appointee benefits from access to NWU research facilities, collaborative research in an academically stimulating environment, postgraduate student supervision, the opportunity to deliver invited lectures, and funds generated through publication subsidy.

Dave has a history of productive engagement within the UESM and the sub-programme for Ecological Interactions and Ecosystem Resilience (EIER) in particular, which conducts fundamental and applied research in line with the needs of industry, agriculture and both rural and urban communities. EIER is a nucleus of research excellence in regional grassy ecosystem dynamics and restoration, and a global leader in forb ecology.

Dave’s appointment recognises his achievements and extensive experience in plant population dynamics and postgraduate student supervision. He is currently involved in the training of eight NWU postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows linked to the Forb Ecology and GeoEcology research groups. The research interests of these two groups intersect with Dave’s knowledge and SAEON priorities in contributing to an improved understanding of the ecology, functioning and restoration of grasslands and savannas, particularly in response to global change (land use, climate change) and natural disturbances.

More broadly, the formal link with SAEON will further help to focus joint research on National Research Foundation (NRF) priorities; being research with both knowledge and societal impact that informs sound environmental policy.

Several shared student projects make use of longer-term data sets (15+ years) collected by SAEON at research and monitoring platforms over periods that extended far beyond the one- to three-year timeframe of the typical postgraduate project. This lends itself to more rigorous and impactful research outputs, and the SAEON–NWU partnership builds on continuous observational data collection, archiving and meta-analyses.

Dave’s host at NWU, Professor Frances Siebert, had this to say regarding his appointment:

“Since the enrolment of our first jointly supervised PhD student in 2019, Dr Thompson has entrenched himself as a key member of the Forb Ecology Research Group and the UESM team. He will be an invaluable asset for the North-West University as a co-researcher and collaborator in various aspects of grassland and savanna research and management application. His appointment as Extraordinary Professor formalises this productive collaborative relationship in recognition of his past and future contributions to critical grassland and ecology research at North-West University.“