Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair public lecture: Neither Here Nor There, by Rita Duffy.

Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair public lecture: Neither Here Nor There, by Rita Duffy.

The Maxeke – Robinson Irish Studies Chair emerges out of a longstanding collaboration between the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at UWC and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute (TLRH) at Trinity College Dublin that has focused on colonialism, partition, postcoloniality and race.  Relationships and networks forged through these institutions’ fellowship programmes have laid the groundwork for today’s historic announcement.  The Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair inaugurates, through the Humanities, a broader and reciprocal collaboration between Ireland and South Africa which engages our complex inheritance of colonialism, empire, partition and apartheid, and how to overcome this legacy. The CHR and TLRH’s work in aesthetics and politics has drawn attention across our social and institutional settings to the ways that cultural production can bring political thought, the arts, and research across disciplines into the public sphere. This shared understanding stems from a recognition of a history that marks both countries in relation to legacies of colonialism and partition, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the work of education and the arts to find unexplored modes of reconciliation to transcend these legacies.

Bio

Rita Duffy is one of Ireland’s ground-breaking socially engaged visual artists and a visiting lecturer at international universities, advocating for the arts with contributions to numerous publications and media engagements. She was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Architects for developmental work in the built environment, and an associate at the Goldsmiths College London, collaborating on artistic exchange with Argentina and Chile looking at the role of art in post conflict societies. Duffy’s work is held in museum and private collections worldwide and her public art projects continue to grow in scale and ambition. In 2018 she was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Irelands elected ‘people of the arts’.