Mihlali Ngubo

New Archival Visions PhD Fellow

Mihlali Ngubo’s academic interests are rooted in questions of representation, power, and the ways in which systems shape human experience across time. During her Honours research, she examined the effects of linguistic marginalisation within the education system, exploring how language functions not merely as a tool of communication but as a mechanism through which inclusion, exclusion and inequality are reproduced across generations.

As a Master’s student under the New Archival Visions and Visual History and Theory Chair, her research extends these concerns into the realm of visual culture. While her previous work focused on language as a site of power, her current project investigates the visual construction of the Black body and the historical and contemporary ways in which Black subjects have been represented through images. She is interested in how visuality participates in the production of meaning, how images shape perceptions of race and humanity along with how archives of representation continue to influence the present.