Ralph Hamann is Professor and Deputy Director: Faculty and Research at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. His research and teaching is on strategy and sustainability, social innovation and entrepreneurship, and cross-sector collaboration. Among his other roles, he is co-founder and director of the Embedding Project South Africa and the Southern Africa Food Lab, initiatives bridging research and practice.

Rebecca Freeth is a practitioner and scholar who researches, teaches, facilitates, and writes about collaboration. Rebecca is a senior consultant with Reos Partners (Africa office) where her work focuses on systemic issues such as dismantling structural racism, gender-based violence, education, and organisational culture change. She leads Reos Africa’s work in fragile and conflict affected contexts.

In this session, which took place in April 2025, Ralph and Rebecca highlighted how it’s become common to see multi-stakeholder dialogue as an important pathway towards social innovation and answered the question: what does it take to convene such dialogue over extended periods, and can researchers take on such a role? They shared some of their experiences in establishing and convening the Southern Africa Food Lab, a multi-stakeholder dialogue platform seeking to help address the problem of hunger and malnutrition in the region. Their paper on this topic is published in Strategic Organization: https://doi.org/10.1177/14761270241279132.

Watch the recording of Ralph and Rebecca’s session on YouTube.