Dr Sechele is a Postdoctoral research fellow. She holds a BA (History and Archaeology) and PGDE (History education) from the University of Botswana. She has been with the University of the Free State, ISG department since 2013 when she pursued her MA, PhD, and is currently a postdoc. Dr Sechele is passionate about women's histories in Botswana, for her masters she looked at the marriage and citizenship laws in Botswana and how they discriminated against women; for a PhD, she diverted a bit and looked at economic history, where she wrote on Botswana-South Africa economic relations 1966-2014. She returned to her love for women's histories with her postdoc project that seeks to understand the shifts in family dynamics as husbands return from labour migration. Her current book project is The Return of Husbands: Of Male Labour Migration Returnees and Women in Botswana, c.1970 to the present.
Publications
Sechele U. ‘Botswana and the Bully: Apartheid South Africa and the SADCC 1978 –1986’ Southern Journal for Contemporary History, 48, 1 (2023): 105-132.
Sechele, U. ‘From Minors to Equals: Transforming Kalanga women status in Botswana’ Historia, 67, 1 (2022): 114-143.
Sechele, U. ‘Botswana—A Modern Economic History: An African Diamond in the Rough, by Ellen Hillbom and Jutta Bolt’, African Historical Review, 51, 2 (2019): 77-78.
Sechele, U. '
A History of Marriage and Citizenship: Kalanga Women's Experiences in Post-Colonial Botswana Until 2005', (MA dissertation, University of the Free State, 2015)
Awards
Newcomer of the Year Award - Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of the Free State, 2023
Newcomer of the Year Award - Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of the Free State, 2022
ACLS - African Humanities Program, 2021
Fully Funded Erasmus+ Mobility - Bologna, Italy (April - July 2017)
African Students and Alumni Forum Workshop - Fully funded by European Union Pretoria, November - December 2019
MA and PhD scholarship, in the International Studies Group, 2013-2019
Funded YSI conference - Budapest, 2016
Funded YSI conference - Harare, 2018
Links
Sechele, U. Pink and Breast Cancer Awareness: Views from Batswana Women, 18 September, 2023
Sechele, U. ‘An Archive with a Facebook page – Doing research in the Botswana National Archives’ , 29 January, 2018