Aidan Erasmus


DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellow

Dr Aidan Erasmus completed his doctoral studies as a DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellow at the CHR before becoming a Next Generation Scholar at the centre. In his dissertation, Dr Erasmus invested in constituting sound as a modality through which to think the resonant contours of imperial war, through the examination of aesthetic production in music, radio and cinema under apartheid and in the postapartheid. As part of the CHR, Dr Erasmus participated in a global exchange programme with Sogang University in South Korea and was awarded writing fellowships at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) at the University of Minnesota and the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. He is currently appointed as a contract lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape, where he teaches on the first-year and honours programme and co-supervises several postgraduate students. Dr Erasmus has published in local and international journals, as well as in an edited volume produced through the Centre for Humanities Research. As a fellow, Dr Erasmus was invited to co-convene one of the annual CHR winter schools on the theme of Technology and the Human.

Related News


Kronos, Oral/Aural: Pastness and sound as medium and method

We are pleased to announce the publication of Kronos: Southern African Histories under the theme of Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method, edited by Dr Valmont Layne, CHR, and Dr Aidan Erasmus, Department of Historical Studies, UWC.

ACIP Workshop: Archiving Otherwise

This year’s African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) Workshop, titled ‘Archiving Otherwise: Sound thinking and Sonic Practice’, brought together CHR staff and fellows, UWC faculty members and students, ACIP fellows, and sonic practitioners for a three-day workshop in early April.

“Don’t speak of letters when you mean sounds”: Phonemes, diacritics, and the transcriptive acoustemology of Sol Plaatje

Dr Aidan Erasmus of the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape will deliver a paper titled Dont speak of letters when you mean sounds”: Phonemes, diacritics, and the transcriptive acoustemology of Sol Plaatje as part of the South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar.

2023 African Critical Inquiry Workshop: Archiving Otherwise: Sound Thinking and Sonic Practice

The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) is pleased to announce that the 2023 ACIP Workshop will be Archiving Otherwise: Sound Thinking and Sonic Practice.

DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellows: Meet the Next Generation

The CHR’s Flagship fellowship programme for early career scholars is at the heart of a deep commitment to transforming higher education at the doctoral level in South Africa.

Book Chapters List

Contributions by Staff and Fellows of the Centre for Humanities Research to edited volumes represent a diverse engagement with the centre’s academic inquiries. The following list shows publications from the latter years of the centre’s output.

Reckoning with Africa and the Desire for a Global Mnemoscape

A new paper by Next Generation Scholars Lauren van der Rede and Aidan Erasmus has appeared in a global-e Special Issue Series on Mnemonic Solidarity in the Global Memory Space.

Seminar: Wilton Schereka

Speculate – troubling reducibility and blackness

The Curricular and the Global, the Tropic and the Taxonomic

The Global Humanities Curriculum Workshop held in December of 2018 enabled a rich set of connections and convergences around questions of the curriculum.

Five CHR Fellows to Graduate

UWC December Graduation features CHR doctoral and masters fellows

Seminar: Aidan Erasmus

Dispatch: Eduction, Sound, and the Senses