Grants and Writing Resources for University of the Witwatersrand

Oxford's October 2026 intake of Rhodes Scholars includes two Witsies. One is finishing a master's in astrophysics and will start a doctorate on how galaxies and their central black holes grow. The other, a Wits School of Education master's graduate, begins an MSc in African Studies.

Presenting Research

The Postgraduate Research and Development Office held the 16th Cross-Faculty Postgraduate Symposium in the Wartenweiler Library in September 2025. Judges awarded first, second and third places in five categories: master's oral talks, master's Gradflash talks, PhD oral talks, PhD Gradflash talks and posters. Winners came from Science, Humanities, Health Sciences, and Engineering and the Built Environment.

Help With Writing

The Wits Writing Centre is free and confidential, and any Wits student or staff member can use it. Consultants work on essays, plans, practice exam answers and creative non-academic writing, and they help writers clarify their own ideas without editing or writing for them. Send a cover letter and draft by email for a written response within three working days, or ask for a face-to-face session. Staff at the centre, on the ground floor of the Wartenweiler Library, try to fit in walk-in clients.

Postgraduates in the Faculty of Health Sciences have a second option. The Health Sciences Research Office runs four-day writing retreats for master's and PhD students in its Writing Room in the Phillip V Tobias Health Sciences Building, where a facilitator reviews drafts of proposals, dissertations, theses, journal articles and conference abstracts.

Postgraduate Funding

Launched in 2023 with a gift from an alumnus, the Wits Postgraduate Merit Scholarship supported 90 research master's and PhD students in its first two years. Recipients were selected from students with the strongest academic credentials who were in financial need because they hadn't received a National Research Foundation bursary.

Publishing and the Repository

Master's and doctoral theses go into the Electronic Theses and Dissertations community of WIReDSpace, the Wits Institutional Repository on DSpace. Located in the William Cullen Library, the Research Commons offers spaces ranging from quiet study to collaboration.

The Wits Vuvuzela newspaper is produced by career-entry students in the Wits Journalism Department.

Our editors work with Wits writers at the final-draft stage, from seminar papers to dissertations. See our University of the Witwatersrand dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• Treating the Personal Statement as a Scholarly Defense
• The Secret to Better Grades: Starting Your Writing Process Early
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter