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27 September 2018
Photo Varsity Sports
Newly capped Protea Khanyisa Chawane will return for the Kovsies on Monday when they face the Maties in the semi-final of Varsity Netball in the Callie Human centre.
A first ever Varsity Netball final in the Callie Human centre lie in what should the Kovsies cross the line this Monday in the semi-final against the Maties in Bloemfontein at 19:00.
Having ended first on the log, the Kovsies will enjoy home court advantage should they progress to the final on 8 October.
The Kovsies won their group fixture against the Maties last month in Stellenbosch by 59-56. It will be the first time the two teams clash in a knock-out match in the competition and also a first visit to the Callie Human centre for the Maties since 2013.
The Kovsies won six out of their seven group matches with their only loss against the Madibaz by a single goal.
They will be strengthened by the return of Khanyisa Chawane (centre) who missed a couple of matches whilst being in Australasia where she made her Protea debut. Meagan Roux, who can either play wing attack or goal attack, is also back. She travelled with the Proteas as a replacement.
They will however be without Tanya Mostert who will be on honeymoon. Her wedding is on Saturday. Remarkable it will only be the second time since her debut in the Kovsies’ very first match in the inaugural competition in 2013 that Mostert will miss a Varsity Netball match.
“The players really yearn to lift that trophy. It’s been some time since we last played in the final (in 2014). My message to them will be to give it their all on Monday,” Mostert said.
According to her the team is currently one that gels very nicely.
“Everyone fully understands their role in the team. We realized where our strengths lie and play according to it. Adding to that we play for one another.”
Visiting Professor, Piet Bracke, Speaks on Public Mental Health
2015-02-20
Piet Bracke |
Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Ghent University in Belgium, Piet Bracke, recently visited the UFS to speak about his research on the Public mental health and comparative health research: between social theory and psychiatric epidemiology.
At the public lecture on Monday 16 February, Bracke stated that part of the sociological attention to mental health and well-being was rooted in the 19th century's romanticists' discontent with self and society. The classical and contemporary social theorists' views on the disconnection between culture and the ‘real’ self resembles the more recent evolutionary psychological assumptions about the maladaptation of psychobiological mechanisms to contemporary societal arrangements.
In contrast to these perspectives, contemporary psychiatric epidemiological research has a strongly underdeveloped conception about the nexus between society and population mental health. Both perspectives, the social-theory-and-societal-discontent approach and the biomedical psychiatric epidemiological approach, have drawbacks. Starting from the pitfalls of the aforementioned perspectives, they have been exploring the challenges posed by the development of a macro-sociology of population mental health.
Recently, this research domain has received renewed attention of scholars inside as well as outside sociology. The rise of multi-country, multilevel datasets containing health-related information, as well as the growing attention on the fundamental social causes of health and illness, and the focus on population as opposed to individual health, has contributed to the revival of comparative public mental health research. Based on findings from their recent research, they have illustrated how taking the context into account is vital when exploring the social roots of mental health and illness. In addition, they have demonstrated how they can liberate a few so-called ‘control variables’ in risk factor epidemiology – e.g. gender, education, and age – from their suppressed status by linking them to core concepts of sociology. With their research, they hope to further the development of a macro-sociology of public mental health.