Bonita de Swardt

Bonita joined the SAAO as a postdoc in August 2009 after completing her PhD at the University of Cape Town. Her main research interest is kinematic studies of nearby dwarf galaxies. With the advent of large aperture telescopes, this is considered to be one of the pioneer projects using SALT. Other research interests include the search for intermediate-mass black holes in the centers of dense stellar systems, the dark matter content of local dwarf galaxies, stellar populations studies in Galactic globular clusters and dwarf elliptical galaxies, chemical evolution of dwarf elliptical/lenticular galaxies, and the origin of nuclear star clusters and black holes in the center of dwarf galaxies.