
Keynote Speakers
Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola is Dean of Research at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. Previously, she was a Professor of Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Chief Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Free State. Gqola is an award-winning author of Rape: A South African Nightmare (2015), which received the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction in 2016.
Gqola's research and teaching is concerned with slave memory, gendered Blackness in Black Consciousness literature, African and postcolonial feminisms, and post-apartheid public culture. Her other books include What is slavery to me? Postcolonial/Slave Memory in Post-apartheid South Africa (2010), A Renegade called Simphiwe (2013), and Reflecting Rogue: Inside the Mind of a Feminist (2016). Gqola holds Master of Arts degrees from the University of Cape Town and the University of Warwick, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Munich (LMU).
Dr Sharon Crozier-De Rosa is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Previously, she was an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University and a Historical Consultant for a Commission of Inquiry which investigated the historical sexual abuse of children in state care.
Crozier-De Rosa works at the intersections of British Empire, gender, emotions and violence history. An international expert in transnational gender history, her research focuses on women involved in nationalist and feminist campaigns in a changing world order, one arising out of the clashing and meshing of imperialist, settler-colonial and anti-colonial aspirations. Her current projects examine the relationship between gender, citizenship and combat; and women’s endeavours to archive their own memory.
Her books include Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash: Britain, Ireland and Australia, 1890-1920 (2018); Remembering Women's Activism (2019), co-authored with Vera Mackie; and The Middle Class Novels of Arnold Bennett and Marie Corelli: Realising the Ideals and Emotions of Late Victorian Women (2010). Crozier-De Rosa is Deputy Editor of the international journal, Women’s History Review.