Program Overview

University of Cape Town Summer School Programs

The University of Cape Town offers a variety of summer school programs, including special lectures, tours, excursions, and workshops.

Summer School 2026

• Special lectures, tours, excursions, and workshops
  • Campus Tours
  • Demystifying drug discovery: what it takes to bring a new medicine from the bench to the bedside
  • Design Thinking 101
  • Excursion: the Cape Town Honey Company
  • Indigenous tree identification in Newlands Forest
  • Legacy Society in conversation: How the paths of a businessman and a scientist crossed and converged in the fight against malaria
  • Professor Bongani Mayosi Memorial Lecture
  • Professor Stuart John Saunders Lecture: Ageing and Medicine: The Growing Importance of better understanding this relationship
  • UCT Distinguished Alumni Lecture: The State of the Rule of Law
• Literature, Art, Music
  • Action and reaction: how Western art evolved
  • Adapting Jane Austen
  • Art Deco: Spirit and Splendour
  • Celebrating the best of Opera UCT
  • Copy editing and proofreading: what's the difference. Who performs them?
  • Glowfly Dance: Literature as changemaker
  • In conversation: Parcel baby: aliases, apartheid and neurosurgery
  • In conversation: Writing the family
  • Irma Stern: finding her voice
  • Jazz legends and their music
  • Light, space and time: Physics in art
  • Local inspiration: one writer on the Southern Peninsula
  • Maria Callas: Prima Donna
  • Music and the sensuality of harmony
  • Music and the sensuality of harmony (lecture-recital)
  • Northern Lights
  • Oral historian or vulture? Documenting South African jazz legends after they've left us
  • Seeing sound, hearing colour: Synaesthesia and the musical mind
  • Sienna: Walls of Gold
  • The Baroque: the age of kings
  • The Italian Renaissance: the dawn of modern times
  • The Medici Women
  • The influence of the Medieval period on Shakespeare's plays
  • To life, with love
  • Writers bear witness: South African English literature 1948 to 1976
  • Writers bear witness: South African English literature before 1948
  • Writers bear witness: 'do angels wear brassières?' The child in post-colonial literature
  • 'What to do with noodle?': humour in the Victorian novel
• Current affairs, history, philosophy, Politics, economics
  • A tug of memory: 21 years in the Karoo
  • Along Karoo roads: Faces, Places & Roadside Encounters
  • Building a capable intelligence apparatus: a case study of the intelligence operation against Pagad.
  • Cecil John Rhodes in love
  • Challenges in land reform: a judicial perspective
  • Clickbait, chaos and credibility: how too spot fake news
  • Darker shade of pale
  • Desmond Tutu – Prophet to Power, Pastor to the People, Healer of a Nation
  • Developing South Africa's rural areas
  • Has democracy run its course?
  • Hiroshima: eighty years on
  • In conversation humanball: performance through connection
  • Mastering others languages: the difference it makes in South Africa
  • Metro matters: local reporting and the 2026 Local elections
  • Narrative capture: how disinformation builds the architecture of oppression
  • Navigating geopolitcal complexity: How did South Afica's G20 stack up
  • Navigating retirement
  • Navigating the Trump global era
  • Reflections on coalition government and national dialogue: thirty years ago and now
  • Sand, sweat and satellite phones: reporting war in the 21st century
  • South Africa in 2026: priorities for action
  • South African Trappist missions: triumph and tragedy
  • Straight out of Pretoria: The news freshly squeezed
  • The 1930s: The decade that changed the world
  • The Afrikaner Rebellion 1914
  • The Battle of Spioenkop: personalities and outcomes
  • The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran had to die
  • The age of decay: Ageing, shrinking populations and the decline of civilisation
  • The crimes they are changing: exploring South Africa's evolving criminal landscape
  • The language of emojis: forensic and legal linguistics
  • The truth about Cape slavery: Challenging historical distortions
  • Tracking the triggers: inside South Africa's firearm controversies
  • Tradewinds: The cosmopolitan Swahili world
  • Understanding Africa-China relations
  • Unlocking South Africa's socio-economic potential
  • Vines, wines and political designs
  • We can fix it together - solutions to fixing South African education in a post covid road map.
• Medicine
  • Current understandings of neurodivergence and practical implications
  • Designed for life: the art of human-centred medical innovation
  • HIV still matters: exploring progress, challenges and why collective action remains critical
  • Hot Topics in Neuroscience
    • Why empathy is breaking healthcare: The neuroscience of compassion
    • Adolescent mental health: a better understanding
    • Why does that hurt?
    • Traumatic stress across generations: epigenetic insights
    • Growing mini-brains: how stem cells are helping us understand what makes us human
    • How can I find the right person for persistent pain? Navigating the health care system in South Africa
  • Music and medicine: integration of health and wellbeing
  • The guinea pig club
  • The origins of western medicine
  • Vula: journeying from an idea in a rural clinic to revolutionising care for 2 million patients
• Science
  • A 'just' transition' or just a transition?
  • Altered states, dreams and archives
  • Big telescopes: exploring the universe from the solar system to the big bang
  • Cosmic Africa
  • Crazy Crustaceans
  • Enterprising echnoderms
  • Geological deep time
  • Monumental Molluscs
  • Our Science ourselves: How gender, race and social movements shaped the study of science
  • Out of this world and into the next
  • Perceived scientific paradoxes
  • Perplexing people
  • Stupendpus spiders
  • Twentieth century giants of science
• Conservation and Nature
  • Cape honey bees: cognitive marvels
  • Capturing water
  • Chinese and Japanese gardens: differences and similarities
  • Human in nature
  • Newlands forest: bark harvesting and invasive alien plant species
  • Waiting for evolution: The closer the baboons come the more we see ourselves. Are we prepared to look?
• Information Technology
  • Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrencies
  • From tradition to transformation: the ceo and the tech shift in mining
  • Living with AI agents: navigating a future of digital collaboration
  • The rise of the machines
• Practical Courses
  • How to write a novel
  • Images observed, dreamed and imagined
  • Ways of seeing
  • Write your short story: from concept to completion

Summer School 2025

• Free lectures, tours, excursions, workshops
  • Vice-Chancellor's lecture
  • Professor John Stuart Saunders lecture
  • UCT distinguished alumni lecture: South Africa's second transition and The 'GNU': miracle or mirage?
  • Campus Tours led by Emeritus Registrar, Hugh Amoore, of the university's Rondebosch campuses
  • Exploring mosses on upper campus
  • Design thinking 101
  • Indigenous Tree identification in Newlands Forest
  • Threats and conservation interventions: the (critically endangered African penguin
  • Trees on Upper campus
  • UCT and surrounds heritage route
• History, Philosophy, Politics, Current Affairs, Economics
  • 2024 Elections: from US to Europe, India and Iran
  • Eighty years since D-Day
  • Raiders, traders and crusaders: how the Baltic Rim shaped the world
  • A socio-political journey through sport
  • Africa: a battleground for the Russia-Ukraine war?
  • An intellectual tour of Asian popular culture
  • Disinformation nation: how smear campaigns and character assassins can shape a country
  • Elections 2024: why the DA Mmusi Maimane, Songezo Zibi and Zackie Achmat failed
  • Existentialism: origins, meaning and implications
  • Fantasy and fact in immigration politics and policy
  • How South Africa survived State Capture and the lessons
  • How to win the war on corruption
  • Italian prisoners of war: the real story of their captivity in in South Africa during World War Two:
  • Karoo Roads
  • Lessons from the Springboks
  • Organised crime on our doorstep: exposing the underworld's extensive reach
  • Remembering the Union Castle shipping line
  • South Africa's State owned enterprises: From state capture to governance reform
  • South Africa's multiparty government: success or realignment
  • Sudan: past, current and future
  • The challenge of economic development during the financialised phase of capitalism
  • The human impact of large-scale disaster
  • The world and South Africa beyond 2025: the lates flags, scenarios, and probabilities
  • Tony Heard: his life as a journalist
  • Understanding Africa-China relations
  • Cartooning ructions: when the parallel universe intersects with the real world
  • Winnie and Nelson Mandela
• Conservation and Nature
  • Green Zone landscapes
  • Landscape heritage and garden design
  • Nan Lian Garden
  • Seabirds of the Benguela Bounty
  • Southern African documentary film-making
  • The mystery of mosses
  • What is that tree? exploring the diversity of trees in urban areas in Cape Town
• Information Technology
  • Applications of AI
  • Symbolic artificial intelligence in the age of ChatGPT
  • Cancelled: The role of ethics in scientific knowledge and emergent technology
  • Will robots take my job?
• Medicine
  • Anaesthesia during the Anglo-Boer War
  • Chinese medicine
  • Hot Topics in Neuroscience
    • Acute stroke: the what, the who and the where to
    • Dementia: overview and new directions
    • Ketamine: revolutionary new treatment for depression or pseudoscience?
    • The neuroscience of forgiveness
    • The use of mushrooms in the treatment of mental health disorders
  • Implementation of the NHI
  • Legalisation of assisted dying
  • Pacemakers for hearts save lives
  • Palliative care: a fundamental aspect of universal health coverage
  • The neuropsychology of Long Covid
  • The paradox of a life changed by a lung transplant
  • Towards a Proton Beam facility for cancer
  • Unlocking the mind: exploring the frontier of psychiatric genomics
• Practical Courses
  • A journey in Colour
  • Chinese for beginners
  • Italian Intermediate
  • Lets write about life
  • Not definite: 'first hand eye'
  • Unleashing your creativity through writing
• Science
  • Amamzing amphibians
  • Are we stardust or nuclear waste?
  • Big ideas in the biological sciences: do we have free will?
  • Bizarre birds
  • Carbon dioxide: the trace greenhouse gas of life
  • Climate crises and opportunities in South Africa 2025
  • Finding 'old fourlegs' : the recent history of the coelacanth
  • How far away is the sun?
  • Ice ages: past, present and future
  • Incredible insects
  • Life history recorded in bones and teeth
  • Marvelous mammals
  • Rediculous reptiles
  • Spaceflight in the 21st century
  • The lion's historian
  • The marvels of electricity
• Literature, Art, Music
  • A month in Provence
  • An uncomfortable paradise: a history of dispossession and slavery in Simon's Town
  • Art, serenity and conflict: a tale of five cities
  • Art, tattoos and extra-ordinary lives: writing trailblazing women
  • Ausi told me
  • Crooked seeds
  • Debussy and impressionism: the triumph of light
  • Empire of spies
  • Every day is an opening night: a troubadour tells his story
  • Hamlet? I saw it on Radio
  • How to listen to classical music: enhancing your understanding and appreciation
  • J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations
  • J.S.Bach reinvented
  • Manet: master of the modern idiom
  • Mussorgsky: pictures at an exhibition
  • One more sea to cross
  • Pens versus guns: challenging colonialism
  • Phases, phrases and palindromes
  • Rising stars in concert: Opera UCT
  • Cancelled: The Arabic-Afrikaans writing tradition: history and development
  • The Frozen North: Inuit art and culture
  • The Sonnet
  • The South African Musical
  • The art of the illustrated book
  • The meaning of a life: a South African scientist's tale
  • The painted Christ
  • The poetry of God
  • The young Picasso
  • Writers bear witness: the Second World War
  • Writers bear witness: between the wars 1919 -1939
  • Writing reviews that resonate - book bashing or not?

Summer School 2024

• Architecture and the built environment
  • Compounds and hostels: history and transformation
  • The significance of vernacular architecture
• Conservation and Nature
  • Into the future: the Kruger National park as a region
  • Mastery of societal fissures as a way to approach economic opportunity
  • Sisters of wilderness
  • The Okavango Delta: paradise in peril
• Excursions and Tours
  • A Guided tour of D-School: Africa's state-of-the-art building
  • Body Donation why and how?
  • Campus Walking Tours
  • Indigenous tree identification in Newlands Forest
  • Map my way curated heritage route
  • The early UCT Grootte Schuur Rondebosch campus: architects and architecture
• Information Technology
  • AI unveiled: Understanding artificial intelligence and its impact on our world
  • Will robots take my job
• Law and human rights
  • Cyper space and human rights
  • Know your rights under the Consumer Protection Act and the National Credit
  • Pension funds in South Africa: learnings from tales of greed, folly and virtue
• Literature Art Music
  • A Wander through the wonder of some fascinating English words
  • Art in motion
  • Books that changed my life
  • Five favourites: Poetry in Person
  • From the Cape to Cairo
  • I know what I Iike
  • Iintrospection and documentation: an overview of dominant strands in contemporary South African photography
  • Indian classical music: reverie and understanding
  • Landscapes in art: creating heaven on earth
  • Mathematics in the plays of Tom Stoppard
  • Moulded by the hands of god
  • Mozart: myths, mysteries and music
  • Notes and curiosities from Florence
  • Painting and the eye of the beholder
  • Rising stars in concert: Opera UCT
  • Robert and Clara Schumann: very private lives
  • Schizophrenia: Journey and care
  • Sir Abe Baily: a biography
  • The first true romantic: exploring the troubled musical genius of Robert Schumann
  • The medical road less travelled
  • The people's bible: fresco cycles and the golden legend
  • The unprecedented media cult of Daisy de Melker
• Medicine
  • A tale of two disorders: ADHD and ASD
  • Understanding breast cancer
  • Anaesthesia: more than just a deep sleep (part 1)
  • Anaesthesia: more than just a deep sleep (part 2)
  • Body donation: why and how
  • Breaking the mould: the real story of penicilin
  • Child Abuse: a socio-historical perspective
  • Molecular oncology and personalised cancer care
  • Painful Osteoarthritis: treating pain that is not all about the joint
• Philosophy, Politics, Current Affairs And History
  • 100 years of Radio: from a woman's perspective
  • Africa's Nobel Laureates: have we received enough credit?
  • Antisemitism in South Africa: a history
  • Are you living up to your blue china?
  • Boneshakers and b: the colourful history of the bicycle
  • Bringing the looters to justice: the case for an international anti-corruption court
  • Cartels and Collusion: exposing South Africa's organised crime reality
  • Cuba and Africa 1959 -1994: writing an alternative Atlantic history
  • Eskom: power, politics, and the (post)apartheid state
  • Fantastic fishes
  • From Metternich to Merkel: the search for German identity
  • Generals Botha and Smuts and the First World War
  • How South Africa got out of 80s growth slump: can it o so again?
  • Indefinite life extension: is it a good idea?
  • Is it still safe to drink tapwater and swim in our waterways
  • Lightbulb moments
  • Mining the complex legacy of Harry Oppenheimer
  • NHI: PANEL DISCUSSION ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE ACT
  • Operation Vula: the secret communications network that helped end apartheid.
  • Robert Grendon's dream: Remarkable black intellectual, poet, cricketer
  • Russian invasion of Ukraine: Ukrainian diplomacy, new era and opportunities for Ukraine and the global south
  • South Africa beyond 2024: coalition politics and democratic stability amidst political fragmentation
  • The impact of Charles Darwin's visit to the Cape of Good Hope in 1836 on his theory of evolution and natural selection
  • The intelligence war in South Africa: 1939 -1948
  • The world and South Africa beyond 2024: the lates flags, scenarios, and probabilities
  • War on Cuba: Belly of the beast
  • What does compassion, or Ubuntu, mean in Contemporary South Africa?
  • Who was Napoleon 11?
  • Women and Culture in the Renaissance
• Practical Courses
  • German for beginners
  • Intermediate Italian
  • Irma Stern Museum : creative art workshop
  • Isixhosa Communication Skills For Beginners
  • Italian For Beginners
  • Nature writing
  • Open book
  • Spanish for beginners
  • Story development
  • Through music into image
  • To control or lose control: drawing with ink
  • Turkish for beginners
  • Write Your Short Story, from concept to completion
• Science
  • Asteroid collisions: planetary curse or blessing
  • Cederberg rock paintings as a social archive
  • Fire and ice: the earth's special place
  • Interesting physical phenomena
  • Sharks: the perfect predators
  • Sustainable seafood production through integrated aquaculture
  • The cell: a biologist's peep into an awesome micro-universe of riveting beauty and of life's origins

Design Thinking 101

Established in August 2015 at the University of Cape Town, the d-school Afrika is the third Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking, joining the ranks of the d-school at Stanford University, United States of America, and the HPI d-school in Potsdam, Germany.

This workshop is a two-and-a-half-hour session to discover the d-school Afrika and to participate in a collaborative problem-solving challenge using design thinking. The session is perfect for those eager to explore the basics of design thinking.

Participants will gain a deeper understanding of key concepts such as human-centred design and will learn how to use empathy to create better solutions. It is a relaxed and enjoyable experience where experimentation and new ideas are encouraged. Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is necessary. Come ready to collaborate and bring your curiosity.