National Research Foundation rates Wits researchers highly
- Wits University
Wits scholars rated as world-class, future global leaders, and as next generation researchers.
Professor Sally Archibald and Professor Ivan Vladislavi? received A-ratings for the first time at the 2025 National Research Foundation (NRF) Awards in Johannesburg on 7 August.
Professor Lewis Ashwal and Professor Isabel Hofmeyr were A-rated for the third time each.
An NRF A-rating is awarded to researchers who are unequivocally recognised by their peers as leading international scholars in their respective fields, for the high quality and impact of recent research outputs.
Dr Mitchell Cox and Dr Simone Richardson each received the (rarely awarded) P-rating ('Prestigious Award'). P-rated researchers are considered likely to become future international leaders in their respective fields, based on exceptional potential demonstrated in research performance and output during doctoral and/or early postdoctoral careers.
A P-rating is assigned to researchers (usually under the age of 35 years) who have held a doctorate or equivalent qualification for less than five years at the time of application.
Mr Mashite Tshidi, a PhD student in the Wits School of Education, received the Research Excellence Award for Next Generation Researchers, which reocognises outstanding academic performance by final-year doctoral students.
Furthermore, 58 other Wits researchers received NRF B, C, and Y ratings during the 2025 awards cycle. An NRF B-rating is awarded to internationally acclaimed researches; C-ratings to established researchers; and Y ratings to promising young researchers.
The NRF rating system is a key driver in the NRF’s aim to build a globally competitive science system in South Africa. It is a valuable tool for benchmarking the quality of the country's researchers against the best in the world. NRF ratings are allocated based on a researcher’s recent research outputs and impact as perceived by international peer reviewers.
Read more below about the Wits University scholars and their innovative research recognised at the 2025 NRF Awards.
A-RATED WORLD CLASS
Savanna ecosystems
A Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Sally Archibald’s research focuses on savanna ecosystems in the context of global change as well as fire-grazer interactions; inter-continental savanna comparisons; the importance of land-atmosphere feedbacks; and pursuing a global theory of fire.
Archibald has published more than 64 papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and she has co-edited one book and authored six book chapters. She serves on the editorial board of Ecology Letters and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and is the co-Chair of Socio-Ecological Observatory for Studying African Woodlands.
Amongst multiple accolades, Archibald received the 2025 John F.W. Herschel Medal from the Royal Society of South Africa.
Creative Writing
A renowned novelist, essayist and editor, Ivan Vladislavi? is a Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Department in the School of Literature, Language and Media. He worked as an independent writer and editor for 25 years before joining Wits in 2015.
His works of fiction include The Restless Supermarket (2001); The Exploded View (2004); Double Negative (2010), and The Distance (2019). His non-fiction works include Willem Boshoff (2005) and Portrait with Keys (2006). He published The Near North in 2024.
His work has been translated into 14 languages and has won awards including South Africa’s Sunday Times Prize, the Alan Paton Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize, and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.
Rock research
A Professor of Geology, Lewis Ashwal is a world expert on the origin of anorthositic and related rocks. His expertise spans petrology, petrography, geochemistry, mineralogy, and isotope systematics of igneous and metamorphic rocks and their application to largescale processes of tectonics and geodynamics.
Since 1974, his research has generated 140 papers and published in high impact, peer-reviewed journals including the South African Journal of Geology and Nature Communications. His books on Anorthosites and Greenstone Belts (co-edited) stand as definitive works on those subjects.
Amongst multiple accolades, in 2024 he received the Geology Society of South Africa’s highest honour, the Draper Memorial Medal. He received Wits University’s Vice-Chancellor’s Research Award the same year.
‘Hydrocolonialism’
Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER).
Her career before her retirement was in the Department of African Literature at Wits. She has worked extensively on print culture and book history and has combined these with environmental and oceanic themes.
From 2018 to 2023, she co-directed a project, Oceanic Humanities for the Global South, with partners from Mozambique, India, Jamaica and Barbados. She is regarded as a leading scholar in the field of Indian Ocean studies.
While she continued this focus, her interest has shifted over the last decade in response to climate change and rising sea levels, resulting in the exploration of print culture in relation to the new oceanic studies and the formulation of the concept of “hydrocolonialism”.
P-RATED FUTURE GLOBAL LEADERS
Wireless optical tech
Dr Mitchell Cox co-founded the Optical Communication Lab in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits, where his PhD in 2020 focused on structured light in turbulence.
His research combines expertise in structured light with engineering to pioneer solutions for long-range, low-cost wireless optical communications. These solutions frequently involve creatively adapting low-cost components—often in ways not originally intended by manufacturers—and integrating machine learning, now evolving into optical neuromorphic computing, to advance affordable wireless optical technologies. His research is now venturing into the emerging field of optical AI.
In addition to his NRF P-rating in 2025, Cox received the Royal Society of South Africa’s 2025 Meiring Naudé Medal and Wits University’s Friedel Sellschop Award in 2023. He is an Optica Ambassador and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Antibody immunity research
Dr Simone Richardson is a Senior Research Scientist at Wits and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. She leads a small team within the Antibody Immunity Research Unit, focusing on cytotoxic antibody functions in vaccination and infection.
Richardson's research targets viruses such as HIV, SARS-CoV-2, cytomegalovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza, focusing on those that disproportionately affect children and infants. Richardson aims to engineer antibodies with enhanced capabilities for passive immunisation, and to identify antibody signatures linked to vaccine efficacy, to improve vaccine design.
Since 2016, Richardson has published over 42 articles in prestigious journals including Cell and Nature Communications. Her litany of accolades includes amfAR Matilde Krim and L’Oréal Women in Science Fellowships, the Royal Society of South Africa’s 2025 Meiring Naudé Medal, and Wits’ Faculty of Health Sciences Best Research Prize. She has been active in the South African Immunology Society, promoting science communication and vaccine literacy, since 2022.
NEXT GENERATION RESEARCHER
Mr Mashite Tshidi's award recognises outstanding academic performance by final-year doctoral students. He is currently completing his PhD in Education at Wits.
Tshidi’s research focuses on the role of technology in addressing educational inequalities in South Africa, particularly in under-resourced schools. He examines how AI and learning analytics can enhance teaching, support learners, and bridge digital divides in computing education.
His work on learning analytics-driven programming education is among the first in South Africa to develop a predictive model that identifies challenging programming concepts for Grade 10 learners, expanding an approach that has primarily been applied in higher education but remains underexplored in school contexts.
NRF B, C, Y RATINGS
Fifty-eight other Witsies also received B, C, and Y NRF ratings during the 2025 cycle. Read their names and ratings in the 2025 NRF Awards booklet here. Read more about all of Wits' NRF-rated researchers here.