Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
![]()
The Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Free State, Prof Francis Petersen, is pleased to invite you to the launch of the Artists in Residency Programme. This event marks the exciting start of a new initiative at the university.
We are honored to have Mike van Graan, a distinguished independent artist and playwright, as our inaugural artist and playwright in residence. Van Graan boasts an impressive career, having authored 36 plays and contributing significantly to the cultural landscape. His expertise extends beyond playwriting, encompassing cultural policy, artist network development (both locally and across Africa), and advocacy work. Notably, he held leadership positions within esteemed organisations such as Arterial Network, the African Arts Institute, and the STAND Foundation. Van Graan's dedication to cultural activism and artistic creation is widely recognised.
Please join us for this momentous occasion:
Date: Thursday 27 June 2024
Time: 15:00-17:00 (followed by a cocktail reception)
Venue: Scaena Theatre, UFS Bloemfontein Campus
For further information, contact Alicia Pienaar at pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za.
Programme highlights include:
- Staged Reading: An excerpt from Return of the Ancestors, a play that pays homage to the satirical South African political play, Woza Albert, explores themes of democracy and sacrifice through the return of figures such as Steve Biko and Neil Aggett.
- Closed Premiere: The Good White, set against the backdrop of the 2015/16 student protests in South Africa, delves into contemporary issues such as race, social justice, and the complexities of human relationships.
Understanding the nature of prominence
2014-03-14
|
 |
What did Hendrik Verwoerd and Steve Biko have in common? Or perhaps Johannes Kerkorrel and Brenda Fassie?
“They all possessed a certain natural predisposition to prominence,” says Prof Paul Fouche, reseacher in psychobiography at the University of the Free State’s Department of Psychology.
Prof Fouche and a team of researchers from other South African universities released findings on psychobiographical studies done on personalities that played a great role in our history.
The studies show that notable historical figures were very often prolific readers with a passion for literature since childhood. Generally, they also had a great love for nature and a sense of the sacredness of it, as well as a love for the cosmos.
The study further reveals that many of them were forced to take up leadership roles in the family from a very young age and were driven to succeed in order to take care of their own.
In many of these cases, there was a strong partner who supported the leader while they went about the business of governing their world.
Psychobiography is the systematic and descriptively-rich case study of renowned, enigmatic or even contentious individuals in socio-historical contexts within a psychological frame of reference. Over the past decade, psychobiography has become an established research genre and a methodology used by various academics and scholars in the field of life history research.