June Bam

June Bam grew up on the Cape Flats and is author of the award-winning non-fiction monograph Ausi Told Me, Jacana, 2021. Her co-edited collections include Whose history counts, SunMedia, 2018 (also a national award finalist) and Rethinking Africa: indigenous women reinterpret Southern Africa’s Pasts, Jacana, 2021, which includes an opening chapter by Sylvia Vollenhoven. Professor and Director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) in the Education Faculty, University of Johannesburg (UJ), June is a professionally qualified and experienced teacher and university lecturer, she holds a PhD in Sociology on History Education and Youth. With many years experience in higher education transformation in South Africa and globally, she leads on decolonial international research projects that involve a large number of universities worldwide with a focus on feminist indigenous knowledge production on "deep listening" and Freirean methodological approaches to understanding "archive". Before joining UJ, June has held senior departmental head positions for the Department of African Studies, and in setting up the new African Studies and Linguistics Department at the University of Cape Town. She was appointed Associate Professor in African Feminist Studies at UCT in 2022, and is also the founding director of the first San and Khoi Research Centre at UCT where she introduced certificated indigenous language courses for close to 200 unemployed youth and community members. Her other positions in higher education included as Research Associate at the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York (UK), and Visiting Fellow in Museums and Human Rights at Kingston University (UK). She has taught at a number of universities, including as visiting professor and director from 2014-2020 for the "Sites of Memory" course for Stanford University’s Overseas Programme. June has trained many teachers at UCT and at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in the 1990s. She has also taught hundreds of high school children on the Cape Flats, and taught adult night school in the 1980s. She supervises Masters and PhD students in interdisciplinary studies in Indigenous Knowledge and curriculum transformation at CERT. She served as history education advisor in the Education Ministry between 2000 and 2004, and as director of the South African History Project which involved curriculum development in the social sciences. She has published widely for teachers, learners, teacher trainers, scholars and also the general public. She has worked with diverse marginalised communities in knowledge partnership processes including at universities and museums in South Africa and within the African Diaspora. With Sylvia Vollenhoven, she facilitated the process of renaming UCT’s Jameson Hall in honour of Sarah Baartman in 2018 to (amongst others) honour indigenous feminist knowledges.

Restore the right to learn with Ausis, uMakhulus and uGogos: A reflection on Youth Month and returning to the wisdom of female knowledge keepers

Sylvia Vollenhoven, June Bam Cultuur 2023-06-22

"By bringing Ausi/uGogo/uMakhulu back into the classroom and diverse sites of learning for our youth in communities, through both formal and informal education – in our streets, in the townships and in our schools, colleges and universities in Africa – we restore the right to learn and to reclaim being equally human across the racial and class divide."

Verified by MonsterInsights
Top