ITP Conference Grant awarded to Motsane Getrude Seabela (South Africa, ITP 2016)

Written by Claire Messenger, Manager, International Training Programme

We are delighted to announce that an ITP Research Grant 2023 has been awarded to Motsane Getrude Seabela (South Africa, ITP Fellow 2016).

Getrude, who is Curator of Anthropology at Ditsong Museums of South Africa, will be using her support grant to work on a fascinating research project titled Not just a Supporting Act or a Backing Vocalist: Locating Gertrude Shope in the Memory and Heritage of the Liberation Struggle of South Africa: Towards a Biography.

Through this research Getrude will aim to contribute to addressing the marginalisation of women in the memory and representation of the South African heritage. To do this Getrude will focus on the life of Gertrude Shope, a teacher and South African anti-apartheid activist.  Firstly, she will research the life story of Gertrude Shope from her early childhood, adulthood and through to retirement. Secondly, she will seek to examine the reasons for the marginalisation of women in South African memory and heritage. Lastly, she will look at how Shope is represented in the different genres of memory representations and consider that if Shope isn’t represented, why not and what, if she was publically memorialized, what would that look like.

Getrude’s approach to this research project is influenced by the inter-disciplinary nature of her post graduate studies and her work as a curator.

Since her participation on the ITP Annual Programme 2016, Getrude has remained an engaged member of the ITP global network.

Getrude kindly contributed to the ITP Newsletter Publication Issue 7 (2020), with a lovely article titled Towards an inclusive museum: A perspective on DITSONG Museums of South Africa.  She also actively shares her skills, knowledge, and stories from the world of culture and heritage on social media.

We are delighted to be able to support Getrude’s research project and look forward to her sharing her work with the wider ITP network.