Professor Susanne Klausen is now a University of Western Australia 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow. The Institute of Advanced Studies has invited Prof. Klausen to visit the University of Western Australia, located in Perth, in February in order to give a public lecture and conduct a master class.
The public lecture, to be given on Feb. 22, will be about inter-racial sexual relationships in South Africa between 1950 and 1985, which is part of Prof. Klausen’s research project “Forbidden Desire: Criminalization of Intimate Inter-Racial Relationships in Apartheid South Africa” for which she won a SSHRC Insight Grant in 2015.
The Masterclass will be on Feb. 23 and will focus on the history of ideas, legislation and practice of eugenic abortion in Commonwealth countries from 1960 to the present.
While at the UWA, Prof. Klausen will also be conducting research in the archive of Dr. John Blacking, a renowned Africanist musicologist who, along with Dr. Zureena Desai, was convicted in the late 1960s of contravening the law against inter-racial sexual relationships in South Africa. Their arrest and subsequent trial was followed widely within South Africa and internationally, and she is researching their story as part of her larger project.
When asked about this honour, Prof. Klausen stated that “I am simply thrilled and honoured to be a 2018 Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies and am excited to visit the UWA in February in order to discuss my research and meet scholars and students with shared scholarly interests.”