Shirley was born in Ficksburg in the Free State where she completed her primary and secondary education. She began her academic career at UFS where she obtained her M.Soc.Sc. degree [cum laude], and received the Alumni award for the best Master’s student in the Faculty of the Humanities for her dissertation entitled Female initiation: becoming a woman among the Basotho.

Shirley has worked at the University of the Free State since 1997: for seven years at the Department of Anthropology as lecturer, for two years at the Centre for Health Systems Research & Development (CHSR&D) as researcher, and is now permanently back at the Department of Anthropology.

She has published nationally and internationally in peer-reviewed journals; authored and co-authored over 20 technical reports and other publications; and attended and presented at national and international conferences.

Shirley’s areas of focus is primarily in the Eastern Free State and Lesotho, working on pilgrimaging, sacred sites and heritage; health and traditional health; rites of passage and emerging adulthood. The theoretical contributions emphasise the entangled and enmeshed ways of knowing and being in more than human worlds.