Keynote Speakers

Pumla Dineo Gqola

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.

Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Opening Remarks

Simamkele Dlakavu

Simamkele Dlakavu is a PhD candidate at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and a part-time Lecturer in the Gender Studies Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a Master of Arts (with Distinction) from the University of the Witwatersrand. She has also been an active participant in student movements calling for an intersectional decolonial reality in South Africa.

Dlakavu has worked for various NGOs as a researcher, communicator, and organiser. She is the former Media and Communications Manager for Oxfam South Africa. She has also worked as a human rights television producer on one of South Africa’s most popular current affairs show, The Big Debate. She has written for South Africa’s leading newspapers such as City Press and co-edited a Special Issue of the journal Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, entitled: "Feminisms and Women's Resistance within Contemporary African Student Movements" (2016). Her research interests are: Social Movements, Feminist Organising, Political Memory, Citizenship Theories, and Gender-Based Violence.