READ MOREBlackness is Blooming Symposium report
Blackness is Blooming was a symposium held at Zeitz Mocaa that delved into the complex experiences of exile and the aftermath of displacement as explored in the exhibition A Protea Is Not a Flower.READ MOREFilm Screening: Aquila, J.M. Coetzee and The Jesus Trilogy
The CHR welcomed J.M. Coetzee on his visit to the CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab and was proud to host the screening of Aquila, a film by Callum Chiplin and Jade Harris-Tyler, based on Coetzee’s The Jesus Trilogy.READ MOREOpen Call: The Cape Town Workshop
We are delighted to announce that applications are now open for a fully funded 12-day research and practice-led programme of workshops, discussions, and encounters with historical archives and contemporary practice in July 2027.
This Humanities in Session will be led by Vishwas Satgar who will be in conversation with Lee Walters about his new book and exhibition, Facing the Heat in South Africa, on Thursday 15 October, 2026.
Kim Gurney, Senior Researcher for the UK-SA Bilateral chair in culture and technics at the CHR, is a contributing author for the first comprehensive publication on the Lubumbashi Biennale, a newly released book that traces relations between the city, its growing art scene and collective practice.
The CHR and Encounters will be hosting a film screening and master class with Brendan Canty on Monday, 21 September 2026, followed by a film screening and panel discussion on Tuesday, 22 September 2026 as part of ENGAGE/REFLECT/CREATE: The CHR-Encounters monthly screening programme.
The Iyatsiba Gallery Annexe at CHR is a participant venue for the city-wide Cape Town Photography Festival during September, hosting a solo exhibition by Naoya Yoshikawa.
The New Archival Visions (NAV) Programme will be hosting Naoya Yoshikawa in September at the Iyatsiba Lab, in collaboration with The Cape Town Photography Festival. Alongside this Humanities in Session: Archive Lab seminar, Yoshikawa’s exhibition, HOME: IE, will be showing at the Iyatsiba Lab’s Annex Gallery (3-26 September 2026).
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.