Rhodes University

Overview

Rhodes University

Rhodes University (popularly known as Rhodes) is a public research university located in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It was established in 1904 as Rhodes University College and became an independent university in 1951. Rhodes is the province's oldest university and also the sixth oldest South African university in continuous operation. It is regarded as among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in South Africa.

Rhodes University Key Statistics

The university is organized into six faculties, including the Faculty of Commerce, the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Pharmacy. These faculties are further subdivided into 30 academic departments, including the Department of Accounting, the Department of African Languages, the Department of Fine Art, and the Department of Computer Science.

Rhodes University has a population of 8,200 students. Among these, 30% are postgraduates, and over 18% are international students from 54 countries worldwide. It employs 357 academic staff.

The library system of Rhode is composed of four libraries, including the Main Library, the Alastair Kerr Law Library, the Cory Library, and the Sound Library. It houses a collection of 300,000 volumes of print books onsite, around 700,000 e-books, and more than 66 online scholarly databases. These libraries have affiliations with the Margaret Smith Library and the International Library of African Music.

Other Rhodes University key statistics include the Albany Museum and Makana Botanical Gardens located on its campus.

Rhodes University Research

The university holds fourteen of the national research chairs appointed under the South African Research Chairs Initiative. It has received research grants from JRS Biodiversity Foundation for major projects.

The university's top three research fields are physics, biology, and chemistry. Its researchers have published in publications like Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Astronomy and Astrophysics, and arXiv: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. Likewise, its researchers had been invited to attend and/or present papers at international conferences such as the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, Information Security for South Africa, and the International Conference on e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries.

The most cited publication from Rhodes University research is Abell et al.’s (2008) “Freshwater ecoregions of the world: A new map of biogeographic units for freshwater biodiversity conservation” published in BioScience with a total of 1,698 citations to date. The second most cited paper is Akiyama et al.’s (2019) “First M87 event horizon telescope results. IV. Imaging the central supermassive black hole” published in The Astrophysical Journal. It has received a total of 1,344 citations. The university’s third most cited paper is Akiyama et al.’s (2019) “First M87 event horizon telescope results. I. The shadow of the supermassive black hole” published in The Astrophysical Journal. It has been cited by papers, articles, and other publications around 1,220 times so far.

Rhodes is home to several research centers such as the African Centre for Ocean Governance, the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, the Biomedical Biotechnology Research Unit, the Biopharmaceutical Research Institute, the Biotechnology Innovation Centre, and the Catchment Research Centre.

Other research facilities include the Centre for the Study of Democracy, the Centre for Economic Journalism in Africa, the Centre for Higher Education, Research, Teaching and Learning, and the Centre for Postgraduate Studies.