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Alumna Antjie Krog keynote speaker at UFS conference

22 November 2022 | Story Gerda-Marié van Rooyen

Antjie Krog at UFS — The award-winning writer, Antjie Krog, will be the keynote speaker at the International Hybrid Conference from 24 to 26 November 2022. This conference is a joint venture of the University of the Free State (UFS) Centre for Gender and Africa Studies and the War Museum.

The award-winning writer, Antjie Krog, will be the keynote speaker later this week at an International Hybrid Conference titled, The Unsung Heroines and Youth of South Africa: Violent Histories and Experiences of South African Women and Children during Wars, Conflicts and Pandemics. This conference – a joint project of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS) and the War Museum – starts on Thursday 24 November and will be hosted at the War Museum in Bloemfontein and broadcast online. The three-day conference overlaps with the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and aims to assemble historians, academics, and other scholars researching the violent histories of not only women and children in the South African War but in other wars, conflicts, and pandemics as well.

Prof Krog, an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Western Cape, poet, and author of Country of my Skull (among other books), is an alumna of the UFS, where she completed a BA degree with Afrikaans, Philosophy, and English. She will deliver her keynote address, Survival, Complicity, and Race: (Im)possibilities of Narrating and Interpreting Rape in Havenga Affidavits, on the first day of the conference.

Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities at the UFS, will deliver her keynote address on Friday (25 November 2022). Prof Hudson is considered a specialist in feminist security studies. Her keynote address is titled Disciplinary and other stories: From women’s peace movements to the Women, Peace and Security ecosystem.

Several historians, academics, and scholars will either present their research or attend the conference. The conference aims to gather various stakeholders who are researching the violent histories of not only the women and children in the South African War, but other wars, conflicts, and pandemics in South African history dating from precolonial times to the World Wars, Apartheid, to the present. Each of the eight sessions over the first two days will conclude with time set aside for discussion.

The conference programme includes a visit to the art exhibition Unsung Heroes at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum on Friday after the last session. On Saturday, conference attendees can look forward to a tour of Bloemfontein. Click here for more information or send an email to vicky@anglo-boer.co.za.

News Archive

UFS outlines research achievements

2011-09-02

At the launch of the 2010 Annual Research Report, were from the left: Mr Robert Kriger, the director for Policy and Strategy at the National Research Foundation (NRF); Prof. Driekie Hay, Vice-Rector: Academic and Prof. Frans Swanepoel, Senior Director: Research Development.
Photo: Stephen Collett

The University of the Free State (UFS) is well on course for delivery on its most important academic duty as a research university. This was the message that came forward at the launch of the 2010 Annual Research Report of the UFS on 30 August 2011.

Speakers at the launch, which included Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, as well as Prof. Driekie Hay, Vice-Rector: Academics outlined the key strategies and achievements of the UFS for the 2010 academic year. This included the establishment of a Postgraduate School at the UFS, the first of its kind at a public university in South Africa. Prof. Hay told guests that the aim of the Postgraduate School was to broaden research and deepens scholarship on postgraduate education in the country. She highlighted some initiatives the UFS undertook in 2010 to build and maintain its intellectual capital. Some of these initiatives included the appointment of seven senior professors and recruiting more female and black scholars and academics.

Also speaking at the event was Mr Robert Kriger, the director for Policy and Strategy at the National Research Foundation (NRF). Kriger reflected on the brilliant minds of scholars such as Archie Mafeje, Lewis Nkosi and Dennis Brutus and argued for efforts to increase the country’s research output.

Some highlights of the 2010 Annual Research Report:

The total funding available for research at the UFS increased from approximately R199 million in 2009 to just over R210 million in 2010. A total of R31.8 million was made available from central university funds.
In 2010 the UFS was home to 92 NRF-rated researchers. During 2010, four researchers applied for re-evaluation and of these, two improved their rating, while a further five received a first-time rating.
The Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences continue to be the most prolific producer of publications in accredited journals, while the Faculty of Education has shown a 54% increase in its publication output.
Staff members in the Physics department at the UFS Qwaqwa Campus published 22 papers in international peer-reviewed journals during 2010.
Also at the Qwaqwa Campus: Ms Khethiwe Mtshali,a postgraduate student in the parasitology research unit of the Department of Zoology and Entomology, received a best Honours presenter award at the 1^st Annual Research symposium of the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa.

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