Siyanda Kobokana

PhD Fellow, UK-RSA Bilateral Digital Humanities Chair in culture and technics.

Siyanda Kobokana is a CHR Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Historical Studies and a UK-RSA Bilateral Digital Humanities Chair in culture and technics fellow. He has always had a deep interest in histories, particularly history as a narrative that escapes conventional boundaries. His research explores ecological listening as a method for engaging with climate change, media, and sensory history in South Africa, and increasingly considers the sensory ecology of AI, how artificial intelligence reshapes the sensory environments through which environmental and historical knowledge is produced and circulated. Siyanda’s intellectual journey began with biography and object biography, before moving into sound as a modality of history. His Master’s research developed the concept of insurgent listening to examine radio as a space of resistance under apartheid. His current work expands these concerns into questions of environment, technology, and the senses as ways of knowing and narrating the past.