Curiosity and passion drives visionary ‘knowledge worker’
- Wits University
‘Research leadership cannot be reduced to a technical enterprise. It must be innovative,’ says new Research Director.
When newly appointed Senior Director for Research at Wits University, Professor Brett Bowman, was still in the Wits School of Human and Community Development, a piqued curiosity to understand the anatomy of violence in forensic detail was ignited.
South Africa’s homicide rate is six times the global average, with men as the primary perpetrators and victims of violence. As a longtime and renowned researcher in the field of violence and its prevention, there was a need to go further and this time to study this major public health issue beyond its common risk factors. Those associated with violence and homicide are complex, multiple and intersecting, but so are the correlates of many social ills.
He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2019 and had the opportunity to pore over hours of video and CCTV footage at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to see what transforms frustration and grievance into violent action. He wanted to understand what happens in real time, and what micro, spontaneous factors led to violence.
What he found was that participants frame violence as a morally acceptable action, justifying it to both their opponent and others watching.
“In South Africa, this intersects with risk factors such as social and economic inequality, patriarchal masculinities, lack of social cohesion and the use of violence as an attempt to address the experience of being a ‘half-life’ or part citizen,” Bowman explains. Violence then becomes a kind of currency for managing exclusion or seeking inclusion.
His combination of psychology, social theory and epidemiology underpins a drive for scientific rigour and the researcher as an ambitious and visionary knowledge worker. For Bowman, a knowledge worker’s value lies in their ability to think about and solve complex, non-routine problems. “They must generate new knowledge rather than apply existing procedures that have demonstrated limited impact. They must also be driven by curiosity and passion.”
Bowman resists phenomena, such as violence, as inevitable. In delving deeper, one can meaningfully interrupt the cycle and intervene where the evidence leads. In violent crime’s case, it can include alcohol and firearm policies, community dialogue and a critical overhaul of the cultural expectations men put on themselves.
“Knowing exactly how things happen brings us closer to preventing them. It also opens doors for interdisciplinary and multisectoral research and frameworks.”
A Johannesburg native, and part of the Wits community for nearly two decades, Bowman wants to combine scholarly precision with a “strategic sense of what research must achieve in the long run.”
Since joining Wits in 2007, Bowman has held progressively senior roles across the research ecosystem. He began his time in the Psychology Department, then as Deputy Head of School of Social Sciences, later as Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities, and most recently as Head of Postgraduate Strategy in the Office of Research and Innovation. During his tenure, the Faculty of Humanities had its most productive period in recent history and a record increase in publications. Bowman is a B2-rated NRF researcher and a member of the Academy of Science South Africa.
It was this success that led to his appointment in 2022 to conceptualise Wits’s first standalone Strategic Plan for Postgraduate Research Training (2023–2027). This is an ambitious blueprint now driving curriculum innovation, postgraduate funding, and systemic modernisation across the university. The plan aligns with Wits’s 2033 Strategic Framework and reflects Bowman’s belief that research management must be more than administrative oversight. “I can’t state enough how research leadership cannot be reduced to a technical enterprise. It must be visionary.”
This forward-looking orientation is particularly critical amid South Africa’s changing higher-education landscape. With national funding in decline and global research aid shifting, Wits, like most tertiary institutions, must increasingly fund itself through philanthropy, partnerships, and innovation. Bowman sees this not only as a financial necessity but as an opportunity to reaffirm the purpose of the research enterprise.
“Universities have to become more resourceful,” he explains, “but we cannot allow the pursuit of funding to eclipse the pursuit of knowledge. The challenge is to balance the need to sustain ourselves financially with the obligation to generate knowledge that matters.”
Now, Bowman envisions a central office that enables the entire research lifecycle—from postgraduate training to innovation. This will be achieved through integrated systems, harmonised data, and evidence-led decision-making. His model prizes research intelligence over bureaucracy and fosters a collegial, interconnected, and globally engaged institution. “I hope to connect data, disciplines and people to unlock Wits’s strategic research aspirations.”