In her guest lecture, titled Adding ‘flock’ to ‘flight and fight’ as responses to persistent adversity: A honeycomb of resilience where supply of relationships meets demand for support, at the College of Education (CEDU) on 20 August 2013, she shared insights about her research, which centres on resilience studies. This research is carried out in the ERA Unit for Education Research in AIDS, which she heads, with many master’s and doctoral students contributing. This partnership in local research puts forward alternative indigenous perspectives to mostly Eurocentric perspectives on resilience studies.

Communities living in rural parts of South Africa, such as Limpopo or Mpumalanga, increase their chances of coping and flourishing by making use of their collective resources. Not only the teachers, but also the school leadership and the community-based partnerships that exist within the school, all work together to achieve a better future for those living with significant hardship in the community. The lack of resources does not appear to be hindering the collective group as teachers teach despite a lack of some of the teaching tools. By means of the relationships that exist in the group, the schools are able to access the resources of others where they are not available to a specific individual.

This networked linking of people to each other benefits the collective, and can be called flocking. Like a honeycomb that nourishes and a chicken wire that protects, the tendency to flock together under solid leadership that uses networks with a community, means that an entire community may benefit from holding hands and working together to pool that which they have access to as individuals.