The SANAP symposiums is: “..the perfect platform for diverse disciplines to “cross-fertilise” ideas often leading to collaborations. It is an exciting community; the people are so different, but the focus is on the same problems in the same place.” – Rosemary Dorrington
The 6th SANAP biannual symposium would have taken place this week; now postponed because of COVID-19. SCAR2020 has been cancelled and many more conferences, symposia and meetings. However, our SANAP platform allows us to continue to showcase our projects and highlight the work that we do. Therefore we need to utilize the mediums that are available to us for collaboration and use it to create awareness on national and international level.
The 1st SANAP symposium took place in Stellenbosch in October 2007 over a period of 2 days hosted by Steven Chown of the Stellenbosch University and in 2009 the Symposium was held in Cape Town, on 8-10 February 2009.
In Grahamstown in 2014 the 3rd Symposium was hosted by Ian Meiklejohn and Rosemary Dorrington of Rhodes University. Rosemary in an interview with the daily dispatch said the following:” The symposium, last held in 2008, brings together researchers from diverse scientific fields including physics, oceanography, marine biology, terrestrial ecology, space science and astronomy.” “She said research was vital to predict consequences of global changes in climate, population resettlement and their impacts on the food chain. “It is one of the most important projects funded by the NRF, it has brought together some of the top people in their fields.”
In 2016 the 4th SANAP symposium was held at Pretoria University organized by Don Cowan, Thulani Makhlanyane and Miss Yashini Naidoo.
The last and 5th SANAP symposium was held in Hermanus organized by Michael Kosch of SANSA and Kenneth Findlay of CPUT.
Even though the symposium for 2020 is postponed the SANAP website will highlight research of those scientists and students that would have presented during this week. (follow social media to read more) The SANAP symposiums abstracts will be made available on the ALSA repository before end of 2020 on Speeches, Talks and Presentations collection. Please note that you are welcome to send us a file(pdf) of any presentation or talk, if you want it to be part of the digital repository. Let us preserve and build the science and research legacy of South Africa in the Antarctic Region, it will ensure that future generations can benefit from our work. The metadata for the 2018 Symposium abstracts has been done, all we need is your pdf of your presentation and this will be added to the repository. (Example: Christel Hansen) Email your pdf to riaolivier@sun.ac.za
Ria Olivier, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa.
