Abstract
Research-intensive universities globally compete for subsidies from government and nongovernmental funding for research to boost their national, continental or global rankings. One of the criteria for providing subsidies to individual universities is the quantity of research outputs an institution publishes annually. Recently, universities in Africa, especially South Africa, have begun offering postdoctoral fellowship programmes to meet the research output obligations necessary for securing government subsidies. The national and institutional policy directives on postdoctoral fellowship programmes in the country highlight the significant role of the fellowship as an opportunity to gain invaluable research skills and intellectual experience through research, thus empowering fellows towards becoming knowledge contributors in the academy. However, postdoctoral systems are characterised by dysfunctionality for doctoral graduates aspiring to tenured university positions, highlighting paucity in the conceptualisation of the plight of this new set of knowledge producers in the academy. This conceptual paper contributes to the discourse of postdoctoral fellowship in South African universities by providing reflections on conceptualising and problematising postdoctoral fellowship, building on what is evident in literature.