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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.

Encounters Documentary Film Festival highlights: The Walk and The Shadow Scholars

The CHR and UWC will be hosting a number of Encounters Documentary Film Festival Events at the Iyatsiba Lab, including for the Encounters Infocus Industry Programme, Deeper Dialogues, Sharper Visions – One Story at a time (see the programme below). We are also pleased to announce the screening of two CHR supported films: The Walk and The Shadow Scholars.

Workshop Announcement: Theory in/as Practice – Practice in/as Theory, Leuphana University, Lüneburg

Theory in/as Practice – Practice in/as Theory is a workshop (19 June) hosted by “Cultures of Critique”, at Leuphana University, Lüneburg.

Artists Forum: Shakespeare to Gaza

The Artists Forum connects scholarly exploration with the CHR’s Artist in Residency programme, so as to bring artists’ and humanistic study into a more intimate adjacency

Global dis:connect Academic Advisory Board announcement

We are pleased to announce that Heidi Grunebaum has been invited to join the Academic Advisory Board of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect  based at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

A listening session with Leila Bencharnia

The Sound Working Group at the Centre for Humanities Research will host a listening session with composer, sound artist, and textile researcher Leila Bencharnia, on Sunday, 8 June 2025.

DSTI-NRF Call for Application Endorsements: UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities and SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory.

The Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) invites applications from candidates seeking grantholder endorsement for DSTI-NRF Master’s and Doctoral Student Funding for the academic year 2026. Successful applicants will work alongside a team of leading researchers at the CHR under either the UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities or the SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory.

In Defence of the Ontological Category of Ubuqaba

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

Artists Forum with Fatima Dike

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.

Publication: Instituting Worlds

The CHR is pleased to announce the publication of a chapter by Kim Gurney in an edited volume about architecture and islands, Instituting Worlds. The book, edited by Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, is published by Routledge.

Tectonic: TOMBWA – A solo performance by Victor Gama

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