Doctor Raita Steyn and Ms Delene Human from the Department of Humanities Education, and Professor Lize Kriel from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria recently went to the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway to present their papers at a ‘Michaelological’ conference sponsored by SPIRE, a ‘Strategic Programme for International Research and Education’.

The conference was two-fold: on the one hand it aimed to produce a book with its proceedings; on the other hand it aimed to initiate a network for the study of the Archangel Michael, which, in the coming years, will form a balance between Eurocentric and Afrocentric approaches. Other participants specialising in Early Christianity, Byzantine studies, Coptic tradition, and art and angelology in religion were from universities in Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Warsaw, Bergen, Edinburgh, Southampton, and Ireland.

Doctor Raita Steyn's paper concerned artist Jackson Hlungwani’s New Jerusalem, and revealed the Archangel Michael’s connections to the Tsonga, Venda, and other African traditions compared to the Orthodox Ethiopian, and Byzantine traditions. Ms Delene Human’s research critically investigated the interpretation of the Archangel Michael in relation to the archetype of the resurrection myth, through the hero’s journey manifested throughout history, while Professor Lize Kriel’s contribution was an exploratory study of representations of ‘Saint Michael as “elsewhere”: Myths of misplacement in the changing visual landscapes of South Africa’s Capital Cities’.