Natasha Vally
Next Generation Scholar
South African Social Assistance and the 2012 Privatised National Payment System: An examination of insecurities and technopolitics in social grant administration and payment. She has undergraduate and honours degrees in mathematics and genetics and holds a Masters degree in history. She works, across disciplines, on the technopolitical in post-apartheid South Africa. Her favourite movie is Blade Runner, she awaits the sequel with anticipation.
A Tribute to Tiisetso Dladla (1985-2026): PhD fellow New Archival Visions Programme at the CHR, UWC
It seems unthinkable to be sharing a tribute for Tiisetso Dladla who passed away in Johannesburg on 11 August 2026. We are shocked and heartbroken at UWC where Tiisetso was a doctoral fellow of the New Archival Visions (NAV) at the Centre for Humanities Research, with her PhD registered in the Department of Historical Studies.
Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair public lecture: Burn/t Out, The Legacy of Forced Displacement During North(ern) Ireland’s ‘Troubles’
The CHR, in collaboration with the District Six Homecoming Centre, welcomes Brendan Ciarán Browne, visiting scholar of the Charlotte Maxeke–Mary Robinson Research Chair, who will present a public lecture on Tuesday 25 August 2026, at the District Six Homecoming Centre.
Humanities in Sesssion, Artists’ Forum with Reza Khota
This session will be led by Reza Khota who is a guitarist/composer who has performed, recorded and toured professionally in South Africa and Internationally for over 25 years.’
Exhibition Launch: Rhythmic Solidarity: the photographs of Derek Speirs
The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape is proud to present an exhibition of Derek Speirs’ photographs of the Irish anti-apartheid movement to mark the conferral of honorary doctorates on Charlotte Maxeke and Mary Robinson. The exhibition will be opened by former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
Humanities in Sesssion, Artists’ Forum with Tshegofatso Moeng
This session will be led by Tshegofatso Moeng who is a versatile South African singer, arranger, composer, and music director.
Humanities in Sesssion: ‘Returning Transitions: Memories of Persistent Crises in South African and Russian Writing’, with Ksenia Robbe
In this seminar, Ksenia Robbe present the key questions and theoretical propositions concerning the possibility of reading comparatively and connectively memories of the post-apartheid and post-Soviet ‘transitions’ in contemporary South African and Russian writing.
Archive Lab: ‘Archiving Resistance: The VNS/AFRAVISION Collective’, with Brian Tilley and Makonenyana Molete
The New Archival Visions (NAV) Programme will host Brian Tilley and Makonenyana Molete, founder members of the VNS/Afravision video collective to share how they set up VNS/Afravision in the 1980s to document the struggles sweeping across South Africa.
Winter School 2026: Liminalities: Thinking, Thresholds
Liminality has been theorised as a condition of transition. Whether in its original anthropological form as a movement from one state to another through a rite of passage or in its postcolonial rendering via Homi Bhabha’s notion of hybridity, liminality has come to mark a condition of being “not quite” and “not yet.”
Call for Papers: International Workshop in Visual History and Theory, October 2026
Application deadline: 17 July
Public Lecture: ‘Moving Between Facts and Fabulations: Some Notes’ with Marcos Martins, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
A public lecture in conjunction with the CHR annual Winter School Programme.