In celebration of Women's Month, Stellenbosch 中国体育彩票 (SU) is shining a spotlight on extraordinary staff and students on our campus who champion women's rights and gender equality. Through their dedication and leadership, they inspire and drive positive change within our community. Dr Selina Palm is a liberation theologian and feminist researcher who focuses on the complex intersections between religion and violence. She is a Research Fellow at the Unit for Religion & Development Research at SU's Faculty of Theology and delivers research, education and consulting projects for diverse types of organisations worldwide.
What makes you tick?
I have always been passionate about justice, freedom and agency. I was exposed to black human rights champions and social justice advocates from age 12, many of whom were also faith leaders and I always held these dimensions together. Early on, I saw how vulnerable children experience different gendered risks and roles across the world and this shaped my later decision to not become a mother but to work to change experiences of harm for other children. I remember, when I was very small, my mum writing letters for Amnesty International political prisoners and explaining how systems could be very unjust, like apartheid South Africa, that my father went into exile from in 1959.
Can you share a defining moment in your life that solidified your commitment to gender issues?
When I was 24, I worked in the Philippines with children who had been abused or neglected. I saw how age, gender, family structures and economics can overlap to create oppression in a country notorious for child sexual abuse. I also met women my age whose life decisions had been framed by very different structural contexts but who were fighting for their agency. When I left, I was able to study with Prof Diane Elson, the feminist economist which cemented my commitment to explore gender biases within social and economic systems and shaped my systems approach as a feminist researcher.
?What inspired you to focus on intersectional approaches to child rights, gender equity and gender-based violence in your career?
Audre Lorde famously said, “there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle as we do not lead single issue lives". I was introduced to feminism through the eyes of women of colour from many different cultural backgrounds. I also grew up in a mixed-race family and my lived experience was that different aspects of our identities are connected. You can't pull a string on one aspect without it affecting the others. I work across many different intersections of identity and oppression but at the core of so many of them are dominance paradigms of super-subordination. I think it's so important that we bridge these complex intersections and don't retreat into silos.
How do you incorporate gender activism into your research and consultancy work, and which initiatives are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about bridging contentious topics such as faith and abortion, cultural practices and queer identities, child rights and punishment beliefs, women and ministry, as well as academia and activism. I try to have courageous conversations that amplify the diverse voices of those often left out and use feminist research methodologies as platforms to break intergenerational cycles of violence. It's important for me to connect what I work on professionally with how I show up in my personal life and as a faith leader in my local church.
What impact have your initiatives had on the communities you've worked with, particularly in terms of preventing gender-based violence?
I have worked within so many institutions to provide an insider/outsider perspective on what they do. In the last few years, this has included working within three different South African universities including at SU as a feminist researcher on gender-based violence but also with global GBV prevention pioneers such as The Prevention Collaborative and the United Nations Trust Fund across over 100 countries. I help organisations, government and communities deepen their impact by listening and learning from practitioners and engaging with the root causes of both gender-based and child violence.
Do you have a distinctive stance in terms of gender equality or feminism?
The Indian economist Amartya Sen recollects a memory as a child watching people die of starvation in front of a fully stocked food shop. This early moment of 'wrongness' inspired him to reimagine how to think about global famines. I hope my own moments of witnessing wrongness around harmful gendered and sexual social norms can translate into a small contribution with others in reimagining a more gender-just world for the next generation. This includes bell hooks' notion of teaching to transgress in our educational pedagogies to serve the radically intersectional idea that no one is truly free until everyone is free.
What are the things that you enjoy doing away from work?
I live next to the ocean in Cape Town and love swimming and diving as well as dancing. Getting inside the beauty of creation and into my body are some of the ways I practice feminist self-care, keep a sense of perspective and my body moving. As a global hybrid, I also love that the ocean connects all the continents in the world.
What are your future research projects you are excited about?
I have been invited to chair a working group on Faith and Ending Violence against Children for the Sexual Violence Research Initiative and hope to translate some of the amazing research we have done into practical resources for African faith leaders. I am also facilitating human sexuality storytelling workshops in Southern Africa with queer organisations and faith leaders, an initiative that started with the help of SU's Social Impact Initiative. Finally, I continue to work at the intersections of economics, disabilities and gender-based violence.
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