Thérèse Hulme, DTh

26 Plettenberg Street,
Welgemoed, Bellville
South Africa 7530

Phone: +27 -83-4504606
+27-21-9132488
Email: theresehulme14@gmail.com

Thérèse Hulme, DTh has been working for the past fifteen years as an independent counselor, community worker, teacher, researcher, trainer, coach, poet and narrative practitioner in various communities in and around Cape Town. A significant part of her counseling work was done in schools in marginalized and under-resourced communities where children suffer the effects of high levels of violence and abuse.

Thérèse holds the degrees BA (Drama), BA Hons Afrikaans/Nedl (Cum Laude), MTh (Cum Laude) and a DTh. Her doctoral research in Practical theology with specialisation in Pastoral therapy (UNISA) was a cross-cultural research project. This research, done in a context of poverty and gang violence, also posed an invitation to Thérèse to re-consider her own privileged position within post-apartheid South Africa. 

Since 2005, Thérèse initiated creative writing and drama groups with young people in various marginalized communities. In 2009, she edited and published piemp – a volume of Afrikaans poetry and drama, written by young people of Scottsville, on the Cape Flats. She currently runs a mentoring project with local teachers and social workers who are working with vulnerable young people at a high school and a youth prison in Wellington – a rural town in the Western Cape. 

Thérèse founded two school libraries in the community of Scottsville: at Scottsville Secondary School (2010) and at Petunia Primary School (2011). She is still actively involved in the running of the library at Petunia Primary.

Thérèse has been actively involved as mentor and as a Monitoring and Evaluation practitioner with Musicworks – a Cape Town non-profit organization working with music in the lives of young people on the Cape Flats. Thérèse initiated a songwriting project based on witnessing work with young people affected by HIV/Aids in a foster community in Khayelitsha. 

Thérèse has also worked as an on-site coach and trainer at a mine and smelter of Tronox – a big mining company in South Africa. This work formed part of the Radical Respectful Relationship project of the Institute for Transdisciplinary Development (ITD). 

In April 2013, Thérèse, with colleague Linda van Duuren ,formed the Cape Town Narrative Co-op (http://www.capetownnarrativeco-op.org). The Co-op’s mission is to take Narrative Therapy ideas and practices into the everyday reality of school, non profit and other organizational settings, through workshops and training. 

Thérèse’s practice is grounded in an embodied understanding of the challenges, complexities and possibilities associated with doing organizational and cross-cultural work in South Africa. 

Links to publications and projects:

  • Narrative practices, songwriting and change in the lives of teenage girls suffering the effects of abuse and HIV/AIDS in Khayelitsha, South Africa. Summary of a presentation at the International Narrative Therapy and Community work Conference in Adelaide, Australia in March 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vYG_YhUDJA
  • Hulme, T, Rethinking pastoral power and poverty using feminist-poststructuralist analysis in practical theology, in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ( December 2012) Link: http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/article/view/1263 
  • Kotze, E, Hulme, T Geldenhuys, T & Weingarten,E 2013. In the wake of violence: Enacting and witnessing hope among people. Family Process. Vol 52, Issue 3, pp 355-367. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/famp.12010/full
  • Gaddis, S, Kotze, E & Hulme, T 2014. Peach trees grow in the spaces between people: Counselling practices in the territory of violence. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy. Vol 35, Issue 3, 28 Oct 2014. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anzf.1067/full
  • Online publication by the Taos Institute of piemp ; a volume of youth drama and poetry from the Scottsville community outside Cape Town. http://www.taosinstitute.net/piemp