Relebohile (Lebo) Moletsane is Professor and the JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. As part of her Chair in rural education, she has worked in South African rural schools and communities, focusing on teacher development around such issues as poverty alleviation, HIV & AIDS, gender inequality and gender-based violence as barriers to education and development. Moletsane’s work focuses on addressing sexual violence with girls and young women in rural communities. As part of this, she is co-PI with Claudia Mitchell, of an IPaSS grant: Networks for change and well-being: Girl-led ‘from the ground up’ approaches to addressing sexual violence in Canada and South Africa. She is co-editor (with Claudia Mitchell) of the 2018 book, Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speak Back Through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence. Rotterdam: Brill/Sense Publishers. As recognition for her work on addressing poverty in rural communities, Moletsane was the 2012 winner of the Distinguished Women in Science (Humanities) Award presented by the National Department of Science and Technology. In 2014, she was an Echidna Global Scholar at Brookings Institutions’ Centre for Universal Education, where she completed a research report: The Need for Quality Sexual and Reproductive Health Education to Address Barriers to Girls’ Educational Outcomes in South Africa. Washington, DC: Centre for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution.
