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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

Internet Broadcast Project wins international award
2014-05-05

The Enterprise Video Awards (EVA) named Kovsies’ Internet Broadcast Project (IBP) the winner of the Innovation in Pedagogy category. During a glitzy ceremony on 28 April 2014 in Madison, USA, Edward Musgrave, Deputy Director of the ICTISE Division, took to the stage to receive the award.

The IBP makes use of the best teachers in the Free State to broadcast lessons on more than ten subjects to school learners who do not have access to quality education. And it is not only the learners who benefit. Their teachers receive invaluable training in the process as well.

This remarkable programme provided the judges with plentiful evidence to be named the winner. The IBP team had to come up with highly innovative solutions to overcome the costs of local bandwidth constraints. The result? High definition videos being streamed in real time across a 1Meg line. Simultaneously to 70 centres across the Free State. Added to that is the fact that multiple images are broadcast as one, reaching 43 000 learners and 1 250 teachers per week. To top it all, the broadcast is interactive – the learners can ask questions directly to the teacher during the lesson.

All of this at no cost to the schools.

“It is remarkable for a South African university to receive this international recognition,” said Sarietjie Musgrave, heading up the ICTISE programme at the South Campus. “It raises awareness, not only for the work we do, but also the community work the university does,” she said.

And now the Free State has the highest pass rate of matriculants in South Africa.

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