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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

Global exercise initiative launched on Bloemfontein Campus

2012-03-14

Healthier and fitter Kovsies
Photo: Anja Aucamp
13 March 2012

Staff and students are getting ready to sweat this week with the launch of the worldwide Exercise is Medicine Programme on the Bloemfontein Campus on 14 and 15 March 2012.

The programme will be introduced for the first time in Africa and our university is the only African university that forms part of the launch.

Exercise is Medicine is an initiative which encourages health care providers to include exercise when designing treatment plans for patients. The programme designed by the American College of Sports Medicine and it has a presence in countries such as Australia, Italy, China and Brazil.

As part of the programme launch, staff and students will attend presentations by prominent health practitioners and participate in a range of fitness activities such as Taebo and Zumba. The Wellness Division of the Centre for Health and Wellness has more activities planned for the rest of the year to keep Kovsies healthy. This will include a cycling event and netball, volleyball and soccer games.

Dr Louis Holtzhausen, Head of the Division Sport and Exercise Medicine, says that it has been proved unequivocally that regular exercise is good for people's health.

"It is clear that regular exercise should not only be promoted by the medical profession, but that physical activity should be monitored and recorded by doctors as a major modifiable risk factor for morbidity and mortality."

Dr Holtzhausen says one of the goals of the Exercise is Medicine Programme is that physical activity becomes a vital sign to be recorded, with doctors routinely discussing it with their individual patients.

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