Puleng Segalo

University of South Africa | unisa · Department of Psychology

In this edited book we are compelled to think about the convergences between the technological advances made possible by lockdowns brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic and increased 4IR use in the South African context. The insights presented in this edited volume make a case that transformation of higher education scholarship cannot happen without...

In this article we describe the creation and usefulness of an art-making community initiative that has become a visual teaching tool to help rethink and challenge normalized practices in Obstetrics. The visuals are promoting more caring spaces and relationships. An unexpected online introduction with the two authors during the COVID pandemic result...

Background Preterm birth trauma has become a growing concern in achieving the sustainable development goal targets for mental, maternal, and child health. Although obstetric and developmental complications associated with preterm birth have received a great deal of research attention over the years, subjective trauma experiences of mothers are ofte...

In this presentation, I offer a brief personal reflection of my entry and introduction to psychology. I start from positionsing myself to highlight how we do not come into institutions of higher learning and our disciplines as empty vessels but with histories that shape how we view the world. Drawing from social justice scholars and my earlier work...

Debate on the need for more fairness in academic research collaborations between actors in Africa (or the ‘Global South’, broadly) and counterparts in the Global North has intensified in recent years, while practice-oriented frameworks and efforts to foster more equitable partnerships have proliferated. Important approaches to recognise and undo as...

This paper features the process whereby an experimental Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) program fostered a critical learning community around peace and security across 13 countries and with 40 women. It addresses the epistemological questions of doing research in collective ways (with and among activists/scholars), the axiological challenge of rec...

Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language and rendering them into another. While the process of translation may be perceived as a form of empowerment that brings to the greater public experiences that would otherwise remain in the private, it should also be acknowledged that the shift in voice...

Growing discomfort with uncritical applications of generic universal ethics to community-based research, prompted us to (1) problematize a decontextualized application of ethics; (2) apply two heuristic constructs—situatedness and relationality—to a community-based project; and (3) propose revised guidelines for researchers in this field. The we-DE...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) global crisis is reminiscent of other pandemics plaguing the African continent. Scholarly work on pandemics in Africa evidence that discourses on pandemics are driven by capitalism, modernisation and globalisation interfering with women’s daily experiences of gender and sexuality. In so doing, the prevailing gender and cl...

For many Black South African women, speaking about the gruesome and demeaning treatment they experienced during Apartheid is not easy. Silence became normalized due to the unspeakable nature of what many of the women went through. They struggled to find a way to express their traumas and many lived and continue to live with these hidden transcripts...

This study explored gendered rehabilitation of women in correctional spaces and the systems and structures that recreate inequities in women’s incarceration experiences. Eighteen black women completed in-depth interviews on their offender rehabilitation experiences. Their age ranged from 23 to 69 years old, and they were mostly incarcerated for vio...

The call for decolonisation has led to the unsettling of the status quo within most institutions of higher education in South Africa. We contend that this moment of potential epistemic rupture provides the opportunity for African scholars to reshape the disciplines and disrupt Western canons of knowledge that have dominated African scholarship. Dec...

Collective grieving during the death and the burial processes of a loved one forms part of the healing process of many Africans in different contexts. However, with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the various restrictions imposed during the hard lockdown, the form and shape of grieving has had to change. Factors such as limitat...

Current discussions of peace and security-related policy in Africa focus disproportionately on the work of governmental actors, regional organisations, and the African Union. Implicit in such a framing is the assumption that policy change is driven primarily by state and international institutions. This paper pushes back on that assumption by showi...

South Africa, like many other countries that have suffered through the brutality of colonisation and later apartheid, continues to grapple with ways of healing the scars that remain visible in its citizens’ bodies and psyches. These scars are both literal and figurative, and the impact thereof is felt daily, as people try to find ways of navigating...

The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most notably psychological theory and approaches to research methodology. In this article, we focus on how decoloniality can reshape approaches to teaching and learning. We present a case study of how we recurriculated, from 1999 to 2020, three community psycho...

African nations suffered enslavement, genocide, oppression, colonialism and exploitation. The suffering that African people endured as a result of this affected various aspects of their lives such as their knowledge systems, how they relate to the environment, their spirituality, their history and their overall sense of being. This multidimensional...

This article engages a doubled conversation, between South Africa and the United States, about gender‐based violence and the curious epistemic silence, even in critical psychology, about gendered and racialized violence as a deep sedimentary, transnational and transhistoric, layer of (in)human(e) existence. In this article, we lift up the long hist...

For many black people, the act of writing and expressing one’s thoughts was an exercise of resistance and defiance, one that often meant risking losing one’s freedom or one’s life. Sindiwe Magona’s works challenge the commonly held assumption that writing is a male preserve, and illustrate how, for a black woman, writing is a form of rioting, of sp...

This poster provides a brief overview of my research work on embroidery as a visual method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR6jVG7W6rE

In an earlier conversation we highlighted the challenges and silences in psychology concerning feminist psychology (Segalo and Kiguwa, Feminism and Psychology, 25(1): 78–83, 2015). In particular, we highlighted the challenges of mentorship, marginalisation of feminist work and Black scholars in the discipline, and the hegemony of western-centric kn...

Research ethics forms a fundamental and critical aspect of any research endeavour. It therefore becomes pertinent to pay close attention to our understanding of research ethics and ways in which ethical principles are applied. The need for constant revisiting of how we define and apply ethical principles will assist in ensuring that research conduc...

In this article, we contribute to the current discussions and debates on decolonising Psychology by discussing some critical dimensions of decolonisation as it pertains to the explicit, hidden, and null curriculum. We also discuss the nuances of engaging a decolonised Psychology curriculum as members of staff in residential and open distance e-lear...

This article aims to highlight the ways in which visual methods can be used to narrate lived experiences. Additionally, I also draw from self-written poetry as a way to speak to the embroideries and using poems as a form of alternative analysis that assist in interpreting the embroideries. I embarked on a research project where I used embroidery as...

In this commentary we extend Manganyi's critique of Eurocentric and Western scientific practice of engaging the African Other as inherently strange and unfamiliar. This particular mode of representation and knowing the Other is functional in embodying a uniqueness that renders African bodies as non-human. It is also functional in reifying a science...

In contexts of political instability and change, the value of disciplinary knowledges and the processes that constituted them is often questioned. Psychology is not exempt from this process. Little South African work has illustrated what teaching for decoloniality may mean in South African psychology. We draw on examples of curriculum design in com...

The social sciences has long relied on spoken language as a way of making sense of people’s lived realities. Because of limitations of the spoken language, it becomes crucial to think of the role that art as creative resources to storytelling and knowledge production might offer, and the power of embodied sharing through embroideries as a form of a...

As widely reported, colonialism and apartheid played a key role in creating an official space that inferiorised indigenous languages through policies that promoted languages that aided the oppression. Such an exercise has had multifold implications for black South African communities that include negative perceptions toward indigenous languages, co...

In South African society, many women have overcome traditional notions of gender by becoming primary breadwinners in their homes and providing primary financial support for their families. Employing a Phenomenological viewpoint, this paper contextualises the individual lived experiences of South African female breadwinners, utilising data collected...

Psychology in Africa has for a long time and continues to be a contentious subject. Many scholars have pointed to the importance of acknowledging multiple forms of knowing and being in the world and understanding the complexities of understanding how people make meaning of their world. The urge to understand and define the I notion of being human i...

https://0-search.proquest.com.oasis.unisa.ac.za/docview/1876808747?accountid=14648

The field of Information Technology has historically been considered to be a white male-dominated profession within South Africa. However, the landscape has started to shift with more women entering the field. Our study aimed at exploring ways in which gender is represented and performed in the workplace. Following a qualitative approach, data was...

The meaning of trauma within psychology has for a long time been viewed mostly from a ‘pathologising’ standpoint. Viewed as pathology, people's trauma may become understood using a singular lens thereby leaving out broader contextual (social, environmental, political, historical, economical etc.) aspects that have been shown to play a role in the s...

As people around the world continue to have their voices, desires, and movements restricted, and their pasts and futures told on their behalf, we are interested in the critical project of decolonizing, which involves contesting dominant narratives and hegemonic representations. Ignacio Martín - Baró called these the “collective lies” told about peo...

Like many other countries in the world, South Africa is going through a process of transformation (with a high focus on gender transformation). After existing under an oppressive apartheid regime that rendered many people as second-class citizens for decades, most South Africans are seeking ways to move forward and make meaning of their newly found...

P I N S [ P s y c h o l o g y i n S o c i e t y ] 4 9 • 2 0 1 5 | 7 0 Abstract Since the advent of democracy in South Africa, far-reaching changes have taken place in many areas of society. While many positive changes have taken place in the new dispensation; however, the promise of democracy has not been fully met. The hope for collectivity and tr...

There are stories that many people who have experienced a traumatic and oppressive past carry with them, stories that continue to remain untold. In a country such as South Africa, where ‘empowerment’ and ‘equality’ are the order of the day, it becomes crucial to acknowledge people's lived experiences and how these relate to the changes taking place...

As women seek self-sufficiency, they must still deal with their hurtful past and look for ways to heal as they strive for alternative means to survive and provide better opportunities for their families. Throughout history, women have been rendered invisible and silenced, with very minimal space for their voices to be heard. Many have over a long p...

The study explores the meanings newly employed women attach to the notion of being "emancipated." It draws on critical feminist and post-colonial theorists to investigate how Black South Africa women (n = 21; age range = 30-55) with experience of oppression and colonialism use embroidery to narrate their personal histories. Three in-depth, individu...

This exploratory study investigated the psychosocial impact on rural grandmothers in four districts of Gutu, Zimbabwe, caring for their grandchildren orphaned by HIV and AIDS. The participants included 12 grandmother-caregivers, whose ages ranged from 56 to 76 years, with orphans in their care ranging from infants to 18 years. The study made use of...

The study examined the Impact of changes in the work environment on the construction of place-identity among university academics. Data were collected from five academics at a large distance learning university in South Africa. The Institution was undergoing major structural changes at the time of the study. Unstructured questions were used for the...

South African rap music has played a vital role in the formation of national identities. Most reviews of rap music have focused on the political and social nature of this music, while little attention has been paid to its psychological implications. The aim, therefore, is to explore the psychological power of rap music among black communities. This...