Dr Marelize van Heerden lectures Philosophy of Education, Dance education and Music education at the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music and a Doctorate in Education. Her doctorate regarded the potential of dance education to promote social cohesion in South Africa. She also studied Cultural Sociology at Masaryk University, Czech Republic during a European Union Erasmus mobility programme. Her research interests include preparing teachers for the multicultural classroom, decolonisation, ideas of Self in relation to the Other, creating experiences of dignity in education, as well as research in the field of dance education.
Recently, she presented guest lectures at University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Carl von Ossietsky University of Oldenburg (Germany) and Universidad dal Valle (Colombia). She was also a keynote speaker at a UNESCO Arts education conference (2021), where she challenged arts educators to interrogate their own teaching praxis to identify hegemonic terminology when categorising diverse genres in their classrooms. Marelize’s belief is that tolerance of the Other, is not enough to facilitate cohesion and harmony within society (Rowe, Martin, Buck & Anttila 2018; van Heerden 2021). The role of educators should be to foster a care for the Other, which extends beyond the idea of tolerance. Marelize was the Acting Head of Department for Secondary School Education at Nelson Mandela University.