Program Overview

University of Cape Town Summer School Programs

The University of Cape Town offers a variety of summer school programs, including courses in Literature, Art, Music, Current Affairs, History, Philosophy, Politics, Economics, Medicine, Science, Conservation, and Nature.

Summer School 2026

• Special lectures, tours, excursions, and workshops
• Literature, Art, Music
• Current affairs, history, philosophy, Politics, economics
• Medicine
• 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
• Information Technology
• Practical Courses

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 latest 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 latest 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

Geological Deep Time

Course Description

We live for such a brief period of time compared to the age of Earth, making it difficult for us to comprehend geological deep time. For most of history, Earth was considered to be created by a god within the relatively recent past – c6 000 years ago. However, when people started to look at the rocks rather than religious texts, they began to realise that Earth was incredibly old. Just how old was a difficult question to answer, but the presence of fossils allowed for an initial and detailed ordering of the relative age of rocks. It was only in the early twentieth century, with the discovery of radioactive elements, that absolute, numerical ages were successfully applied to rocks, giving rise to our modern understanding of the timing of Earth's eventful past. This course introduces the concept of deep time and what it means to our own short existence on Earth.

Lecture Titles

1. What is deep time?
2. A history of deep time: the fossil record
3. A history of deep time: radiometric, numerical dating of rocks

Recommended Reading

Compton, JS. 2024. Interpreting Earth: A History of Geology Through Encounters with Table Mountain. Cape Town: Earthspun Books.

Instructor

John Compton received his PhD in Earth Science from Harvard University in 1986 and taught at the School of Marine Science, University of South Florida before moving in 1996 to the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town (UCT). At UCT he taught a first-year introductory course on Earth and environmental sciences and, in collaboration with students and colleagues, he has published over 60 papers spanning a wide range of research topics. He is now emeritus and continues to work on various research projects, as well as publishing natural history books.