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12 December 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Johan Roux
Dionne
Dr Dionne van Reenen received her PhD during the December Graduation Ceremonies at the UFS
Very seldom in modern history do we try to critically think about how our bodies and even more those of women are presented in modern popular culture. Through her PhD research project, Dionne van Reenen attempts to critically analyse ideological formations of the body in performance and its discursive distribution in the consumption of contemporary popular media, adding to existing literature and research on the topic.

Her dissertation is titled Performing the Erotic: (Re)presenting the Body in Popular Culture.

Van Reenen, a senior researcher at the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice at the University of the Free State (UFS), received her PhD qualification specialising in English on Wednesday 11 December 2019 during the final ceremony of the December Graduation.

Van Reenen has extensive experience in all areas of education. Her work at the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice is interdisciplinary, involving both everyday and institutional politics. She also holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy, which she obtained in 2013 from the UFS. In 2016, she chaired the UFS Language Policy Review Committee and established the Gender and Sexual Equity Office, which formulated the Sexual Harassment, Misconduct, and Violence Policy at the UFS. 

Changing of social constructs in media consumption

“My study focuses on performative framings of social constructs of gender, race, and class (along with size, age, and ability) in the ordering processes of society,” she says.  These performative framings in are in turn sustained by the (re)presentation of eroticised bodies in popular visual media in the 21st century. “These framings and orderings are critiqued as nothing new, but simply entertainment product that is trading in ideologies and stereotypes that have long been in sociocultural circulation, and they affect how people think, speak and act.” 

The study also shows that the dynamics of ‘virtuality’ and ‘visuality’ in the digital age are altering traditional demarcations of space, place, time, and community, and have paved the way for formations of global cultures that are, at the same time, informative, expedient, empowering, homogenising, prescriptive, and imperialising.

Whilst the #MeToo movement focused more on gender-based violence, gender inequality, and sexual violence, which are big social issues and do not exist in isolation, Van Reenen used her critical philosophical training to understand how, in the current era, the dominant discourse on representations of the body, particularly marginalised bodies, has been constructed at the popular level. 

With every PhD research dissertation the candidate’s main aim is to add new knowledge to a discipline. For Van Reenen, it is important that her research can contribute to a change in social and cultural constructs by re-imagining the (re)presentations of the body in popular media.

News Archive

Africa's Black Rhino conservation strategy must change
2017-07-10

 Description: Black Rhino Tags: conservation strategy, black rhino, Nature Scientific Reports, National Zoological Gardens of South Africa, extinction, decline in genetic diversity, Prof Antoinette Kotze, Research and Scientific Services, Dr Desire Dalton 

The black rhino is on the brink of extinction. The study that was 
published in the Nature Scientific Reports reveals that the
species has lost an astonishing 69% of its genetic variation. 
Photo: iStock

The conservation strategy of the black rhino in Africa needs to change in order to protect the species from extinction, a group of international researchers has found. The study that was published in the Nature Scientific Reports reveals that the species has lost an astonishing 69% of its genetic variation. 

South African researchers took part 
The researchers, which included local researchers from the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa (NZG), have highlighted the fact that this means the black rhino is on the brink of extinction. "We have found that there is a decline in genetic diversity, with 44 of 64 genetic lineages no longer existing," said Prof Antoinette Kotze, the Manager of Research and Scientific Services at the Zoo in Pretoria. She is also affiliate Professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of the Free State and has been involved in rhino research in South Africa since the early 2000s.  

DNA from museums and the wild 
The study compared DNA from specimens in museums around the world, which originated in the different regions of Africa, to the DNA of live wild animals. The DNA was extracted from the skin of museum specimen and from tissue and faecal samples from animals in the wild. The research used the mitochondrial genome.

"The rhino poaching ‘pandemic’
needs to be defeated, because
it puts further strain on the genetic
diversity of the black rhino.”


Ability to adapt 
Dr Desire Dalton, one of the collaborators in the paper and a senior researcher at the NZG, said the loss of genetic diversity may compromise the rhinos’ ability to adapt to climate change. The study further underlined that two distinct populations now exists on either side of the Zambezi River. Dr Dalton said these definite populations need to be managed separately in order to conserve their genetic diversity. The study found that although the data suggests that the future is bleak for the black rhinoceros, the researchers did identify populations of priority for conservation, which might offer a better chance of preventing the species from total extinction. However, it stressed that the rhino poaching ‘pandemic’ needs to be defeated, because it puts further strain on the genetic diversity of the black rhino. 

Extinct in many African countries 
The research report further said that black rhino had been hunted and poached to extinction in many parts of Africa, such as Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Sudan, and Ethiopia. These rhino are now only found in five African countries. They are Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa, where the majority of the animals can be found. 

 

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