Ilse de Korte

Dr Ilse de Korte is a senior lecturer in literature and head of the section Afrikaans and Dutch at Northwest University (Vanderbijlpark campus). Ilse started her career at the University of Cape Town and in 1999 she received the Stichting Studiefonds voor Zuid Afrikaanse Studenten Studiebeurs to conduct research for her MA-thesis at Leiden University. In 2000 she returned from the Netherlands to enrol for a PhD. Resuming contract teaching at the University of Cape Town between 2000 and 2004, she received the Nuffic-scholarship for research at the Radboudt University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands in 2004. After completing her PhD, Ilse spent the next few years teaching at the Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza in Poland, the film school, AFDA, and UNISA. In 2011, she joined Oxford University Press as Development Editor in Higher Education.

After publishing the first Afrikaans translation of the classic text, the Kama Sutra, in 2013 (as Afrikamasutra), she won the UNISA Hiddingh Currie Award for Academic Excellence in 2014. In 2014 she returned to UCT where she completed a PGDip in Higher Education whilst lecturing at the Graduate School of Business and in the Faculty of Health Sciences. The year 2015 not only saw the birth of her son, but also the birth of her first Afrikaans chick-lit novel, Die Jaar toe Emma begin kook het. Early in 2016, Ilse was appointed as head of Afrikaans and Dutch at Rhodes University. Finally, in 2018, she took up a position as senior lecturer of Afrikaans literature at Northwest University, where her leadership abilities came to the fore again as head of the Vanderbijlpark campus section of Afrikaans and Dutch since 2019. She is a member of the Afrikaanse Letterkunde Vereeniging and Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. Her area of expertise is popular romance in Afrikaans.