Dr Catherine Burns

Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand

Catherine Burns is based at “WISER” a research institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. Educated in South Africa and in the USA she has taught at several local and international universities. She is an historian and her teaching, research and publications focus on modern African history, medical and health history, the history and ethnography of reproduction and sex, ethics in medical research, and the history of gender in southern Africa. She has published, taught, and supervised research across all these themes. She has inaugurated a major “Project on Sex Histories” (POSH) in 2012. She has just finished a book on a major hospital in South Africa with 2 other historians, and is completing a new biography of a herbalist and midwife who lived and practiced in South Africa from 1880 to 1940 titled “A Little Women's Advice to the Public on the Cure of Various Diseases: the life and times of Louisa Mvemve”.  Dr Burns has also been commissioned to write a book, tentatively titled “The History of Sex in South Africa”, for a special series in 2013. She has a deep interest in the ANC and its history and her original research thesis for her honours degree was a study of the ANC and SACP in the World War II era. She is interested in all “transitional” talk, in relation to both party and civic political history in the region. Catherine has organised two roundtables on Rape at Wits on April 11 and July 3 this year, the latter panel set Rape in comparative perspective in the global south.

The title of her presentation is: "Why does the history of rape matter?"

Last Modified: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:59:10 SAST