Michaelis staff honoured at UCT Staff Awards 2023

This year, Michaelis staff shone at the university's annual staff awards hosted at the Baxter Theatre on Thursday, 23 November.

Associate Professor Jean Brundit was awarded a Creative Works Meritorious award for her photography book, Over The Horizon. Jean’s book of photographs is a product of an expedition to Antarctica in 2019/20 aboard the SA Agulhas II. On this research vessel Jean photographed with an ice lens. The resultant pictures are atmospheric, impressionistic and dreamlike and speak to the current environmental crisis. The images in the book are of the continental ice shelf, the sea ice, ice bergs and the sea and are in black and white and colour. 

Michaelis Galleries curator, Jade Nair, and Dr Duane Jethro (UCT Department of African Studies and Linguistics) were also awarded a Creative Works Meritorious prize for their co-curation of Of Smoke and Ash: The Jagger Library Memorial Exhibition. A collaboration between the Centre for Curating the Archive, the Michaelis Galleries and the exhibition was opened on the one-year anniversary in April 2022 of the devastating fire that destroyed the UCT Jagger Library and its archive. The exhibition memorialised the loss and commemorated the communal spirit of salvage shown by UCT and the wider Cape Town community.  

Melvin Pather was the recipient of an Ad Hominem promotion to Principal Technical Officer in New Media. He is active in the department teaching creative technologies to students and involved in higher educational research.

Dr Stephane Huigen-Conradie was the recipient of an Ad Hominem promotion to Senior Lecturer in the Printmaking section of the school.