2011-NMMU-Research-Report - Research Management - Nelson ...

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Dr Marisa Botha
NMMU Research and Innovation Report 2011 - Research Entities
Dr Marisa Botha is a NRF funded postdoctoral fellow in Languages
and Literature Studies. She conducts research on Antjie Krog’s
autobiographical fictional texts. She focuses on techniques of self-
representation used by the autobiographical subject, and her movement
between identities of daughter, mother and writer/poet.
At the 2011 Annual NRF Postdoctoral Researchers’ Forum, Dr Botha
presented a poster on “Antjie Krog’s Autobiographical Code”. She
also published four journal articles on the work of Krog. Dr Botha
was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) during
the first semester of 2012, where she was also a visiting scholar in
the Alice Paul Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies as
the guest of Prof Rita Barnard. She presented at a graduate student
conference with a paper on "Shivering in the colour of human": The
variety of voices in Antjie Krog’s oeuvre. At the recent American
Comparative Literature Association, Dr Botha gave a lecture on
translation in the South African context in a paper entitled: Giving
a voice to the victim: Translation as unifying strategy.
Dr Botha was acknowledged by the NRF as a leading emerging
researcher based on numerous accredited research articles at
the relatively young age of thirty. She was also awarded (as only
national recipient) the Elisabeth Eybers Prize for Young Researchers
(worth R85 000 for research in the Benelux) by the South African
Academy of Arts. Dr Botha will take up this scholarship in the
Benelux during September and October 2012, liaising there with
Prof Ena Jansen (University of Amsterdam), and Prof Luc Renders
(University of Hasselt, Belgium).
Dr Richard Betz
A postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry, Dr Richard
Betz, has contributed substantially to the research outputs of the
Department. Dr Betz, who is an expert in X-ray diffractometer (XRD),
and who graduated from the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich
in Germany, has extensive experience in X-ray crystallography.
He was instrumental in setting up the new diffractometer from
Brucker worth R4.5 million in 2011, which was installed in the
Inorganic Chemistry section.
Dr Betz assisted with training staff and students in using the
instrument to its full capacity. This expertise also led to the
establishment of international and national collaborations with
chemistry departments.
The acquisition of a new X-ray diffractometer in 2011 has enabled
the Department to determine its own molecular structures, which
previously had to be contracted out to other international departments.
Dr Betz also assisted in the creation of a new research field in the
application of the lanthanides in metallo-medicine at the NMMU,
and he was the co-promoter of the first MSc student who graduated
in this field.