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Dr Gustav Venter, Head of Maties Sport’s Centre for Sport Leadership, has been awarded a Y-rating by the National Research Foundation – a designation for promising early-career academics who have the potential to establish themselves as researchers within a five-year period after evaluation. 

Gustave received his doctorate in history from Stellenbosch University in 2016, and his thesis explored the political dimensions of professional football as played in South Africa under apartheid. He has continued his research in the sport-political axis – an area which he believes offers fertile ground to further calibrate sport into its proper social and historical context in South Africa. This is particularly the case for sport codes outside the historical mainstream, such as chess, bodybuilding, and motor racing. His recent work has increasingly focused on the latter to expand the Centre for Sport Leadership’s research agenda – a key component of which entails analysing the evolving role of sport in South African society.