Abstract

This paper is a story of my academic journey. It is a reflection on my career, highlighting the barriers and opportunities in the development of my institutional leadership, research and teaching career. It also provides glimpses, first, of how my research interests were developed and the factors that influenced my development as an academic and, secondly, of strategies adopted for the development of human capital to ensure the continuation of scholarship in the field of my work in future generations. Finally, the paper outlines the challenges I identified and engaged with in my research in the broad field of family law, including the law governing the institution of marriage and its dissolution, and their respective consequences, as well as the law governing inheritance under both common law or received law and customary law, and the legalised pluralism that this entails.