Prof Elena Moore Inaugural Lecture - 04 March 2026

Описание: Professor Elena Moore of the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town delivered her inaugural lecture on 4 March, titled: “Who Cares? The Directions of State–Family Relationships in Changing Times”.

Abstract:
Elena Moore’s lecture brings together a sustained body of sociological research concerned with how families and care are organised, experienced, and governed in contexts of social and economic change. The title, Who Cares? Negotiating Family Relationships, Care and Responsibility in Contemporary Societies, captures the central question that has animated my scholarship: how responsibility for care is allocated and negotiated between families, the state, markets, and other social actors, and the consequences of these arrangements for caregivers’ livelihoods, gender and racial inequalities, and the quality and accessibility of care for recipients. In this lecture I demonstrate how care emerges not as a private choice or moral disposition, but as a social relation embedded within political and economic structures, shaped by legal reform, policy decisions, labour markets, demographic change, and histories of structural exclusion in post-colonial contexts

Bio:

Elena Moore is Professor of Sociology, UCT and principal investigator of the Family Caregiving Programme (www.familycaregiving.org.za)

Over the last twenty years, her research has focused on social change in personal life, inequalities in family life and the relationship between families and the state. She is the author of Generation, Gender and Negotiating Custom in South Africa (Routledge, 2022), Divorce, Families and Emotion Work (Palgrave, 2017) and (with Chuma Himonga) Reform of Customary Marriage, Divorce and Succession in South Africa (Juta & Co. 2015), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award 2021, and the Vice Chancellor Social Responsiveness Award 2023, University of Cape Town. She obtained a Wellcome Career Award, 2023-2028 to develop a research programme in Family Caregiving of Older Persons in Southern Africa (www.familycaregiving.org.za) and they run an extensive policy engagement programme funded by an IDRC Scaling Care Innovations in Africa Award 2024-2027. With extensive media and public engagement the work not only brings care issues to the public’s attention, but it catalyses sustained national coverage helping to move care from a private “family problem” to a societal responsibility. Their work is impacting regional policy architecture in the area of elder care.