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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.

Dublin Short: A Little Approach to Big History

Join us for a screening of Dublin Short a short documentary capturing the magic of the Little Museum of Dublin’s famous guided tour. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Dr Daryl Hendley Rooney, deputy curator at the Little Museum and visiting researcher on the Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair.

In Black Women’s Hands: A History of Gestures in Photography and Textile

Contemporary Black female artists have reclaimed the everyday labor and domestic motions women have historically performed, as artistic gestures in their own right. For example, the ceramic and bronze sculptures of the African-American artist Simone Leigh have referenced vernacular processes like washing chores and needlework.

An Archive and Forms of Sight: Gestures of Madness

My history of madness in the Belgian Congo will rely on tracking transactional, micro, and urgent documents as gestures. These promise to open “spheres of ethos,” with human riddles, forms of upheaval, and violence (Agamben 1992).

Artists Forum: ASH: Art-Science-Humanities Research

The Artists Forum, convened at the Centre for Humanities Research, emerges out a longstanding conversation between artists and academics working in and through the CHR.

Lessons from Rwanda 30 Years after Genocide: Reflections on Mnemossiduous Practice

Lauren van der Rede is currently a Lecturer in the Department of English at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and is the PI of the Perforated Memory research project.

New Archival Visions at UWC Research Grants and Fellowships (2025/6): Deadline 26 September 2025

The New Archival Visions (NAV) programme at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape (UWC), is offering fellowships for the remainder of 2025. Funding support comes from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).

Forthcoming events at the CHR

Updated 09 September 2025

Film Screening: Albie: A Strange Alchemy

The Centre for Humanities Research (UWC) and the Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival cordially invite you to the second session of ENGAGE/REFLECT/CREATE: The CHR-Encounters Documentary Series, a monthly screening programme which will run until December 2025.

Social Sciences Research Council Award Announcement: Ingrid Masondo and Tammy-Lee Lakay

We are delighted to announce that New Archival Visions Fellows, Ingrid Masondo and Tammy-Lee Lakay, have been awarded Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Proposal Fellowships with the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC).

Tyranny, The Third Term

A Conversation in the Humanities in Session Series at the Centre for Humanities Research, part of the Advanced Research Seminar.