Eminent play activist and Head of Occupational Therapy at the University of Cape Town, Elelwani Ramugondo, will discuss creative expression and the application of the arts in healing on Thursday 8 August 2013 as part of the  Medical Humanities public lecture series.

Presented by UCT’s Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) and Department of Social Anthropology, this new public lecture series will speak to the growing interdisciplinary field of medical humanities, which includes the social sciences and the arts, in pursuit of intellectual synergies and their application to medical pedagogy and practice.

Professor Ramugondo’s lecture, Creative Expression: Some do, some don’t, will depart from a broad perspective of health and healing, focusing on social contexts specific to South Africa. She will draw from a new construct in Occupational Science – Occupational Consciousness – to highlight the politics of human occupation, and to explain how what we do (or don’t do) influences health. Foregrounding the potential of the arts as healing work for self and others, and showcasing a number of local artists, a case will be made for person-as-artist informed inquiry – complementing other arts-based research.

A renowned play activist with a great interest in the politics of human occupation, Elelwani Ramugondo is the Head of Division of Occupational Therapy in the Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, UCT. Her PhD introduced an intergenerational perspective into children’s play, highlighting the increasingly complex play rhetoric within the context of rapid social change, and her recent publications have sparked vibrant dialogue and debate within Occupational Science internationally.

She is also director and co-founder of Cape Town-based social entrepreneurial company Shades of Black Works (SOBW), and serves on a number of boards for non-profit organisations, including the Kidzpositive Family Fund and Children of South Africa (CHOSA) – an organisation that facilitates democratic processes within informal settlements in Cape Town in order to support community-based early childhood development, safety and health.

This event will take place on Thursday 8 August 2013 at 17:30 in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Old Medical School Building, University of Cape Town (UCT) Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Cape Town, and is free. Refreshments will be served from 17:00; no booking is necessary.

Forthcoming speakers in the Medical Humanities public lecture series include prominent researchers from a range of disciplines: Raj Ramesar, head of the Division of Human Genetics, UCT; Catherine Burns, WITS Institute for Social and Economic Research; neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms, Head of the Department of Psychology, UCT; and Lorna Martin, head of the Division of Forensic Medicine, UCT. For more information on the Medical Humanities series, contact the GIPCA office on 021 480 7156 or fin-gipca@uct.ac.za.

 Elelwani Ramugondo audio recording available for download.

Elelwani Ramugondo video recording:

Start: 8 Aug ’13 5:30 pm

End: 8 Aug ’13 6:30 pm

Cost: Free

Category: 

Organizer: GIPCA

Email: fin-gipca@uct.ac.za

Venue: Anatomy Lecture Theatre

Phone: +27 21 480 7156

Address: Google Map 31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa