NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory

Visual History & Theory is a research platform at the University of the Western Cape that promotes a critical engagement with the image in relation to other forms of knowledge production, creativity and contest in Africa and elsewhere.

Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance

The Andrew W Mellon Chair Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance holds together several interdisciplinary modes of enquiry.

Research Chair News


Visual History and Theory Workshop
Power Remaking selves, archives, environments

This year’s NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory Workshop will take place between 27-28 July. It coalesces around the title, ‘Power: Remaking selves, archives, environments’, and will include a keynote by Leigh Raiford who is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Power: remaking selves, archives, environments

Visual History & Theory Workshop 27-28 July 2023 Call for Papers

DSI-NRF Postgraduate Student Funding Call for the 2024 Academic Year

The DSI and NRF are pleased to announce a call for new applications for DSI-NRF Postgraduate Student Funding for the academic year 2024. All continuing students who are eligible for a second or third year of funding must submit a Progress Report and not a new application.

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.

Transience & the Image

Workshop in Visual History & Theory 2022

Durban International Film Festival: The Double Futures of Athlone

Premesh Lalu’s documentary film, The Double Future’s of Athlone, which was sold out at the Encounters documentary film festival in Cape Town and Johannesburg, will be screened online at the Durban International Film Festival from July 21-30, 2022.

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.

African Critical Inquiry Program Announces 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards

The CHR warmly congratulates recipients of the 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards, namely Vanessa Chen, Min’enhle Ncube and Suzana Sousa.

Transience and the image: Call for Papers: Workshop in Visual History & Theory

The CHR encourages the call for papers for the Transience and the image workshop to be convened from th1 19-20 August 2022 at the Centre for Humanities Research.

Doctoral Fellowships (2022-5): New Archival Visions

We are pleased to share that the University of the Western Cape is offering four doctoral fellowships based at the Centre for Humanities Research to commence in 2022.

Performing Charlotte Maxeke

With 2021 being declared “The Year of Charlotte Maxeke,” the DSI-NRF Flagship on Critical thought in the African Humanities at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, has embarked on a special production based on the life of Maxeke.

Breaking Ground at Greatmore

With construction underway on Greatmore, a sod-turning ceremony was held to celebrate the coming to fruition of the proposal for an arts and humanities hub supported through the DSI-NRF Flagship and the NIHSS.

NRF Call: Postgraduate Student Funding for 2022

The CHR is excited to share the DSI and NRF call for new applications for Postgraduate Student Funding in 2022.

A Conversation with Patricia Hayes

Professor Patricia Hayes of the CHR will be in conversation with Professor Tamar Garb of UCL about Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History

The Way to Greatmore

Inviting Artists and Scholars to Reimagine the Future of the Humanities Beyond the Divided City.

ACIP: CALL FOR PROPOSALS TO ORGANISE A WORKSHOP

The African Critical Inquiry Programme invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organise a workshop to take place in 2022.

SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory Review

The SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory underwent its first-phase review in 2020 and has been awarded a second phase of funding for 2021-5 by the National Research Foundation (NRF).

Ambivalent. Photography and Visibility in African History Book Launch

Edited by Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley
Published by Ohio University Press, 2019

Leaving Zion

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Heidi Grunebaum

Publics and Policing: Spies, Surveillance, and Colonial Subjects in Anti-Colonial French Politics

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Nancy Luxon

The Black Aquatic: On Water, Art and Black Movement

A Winter School webinar with Professor Rinaldo Walcott

WINTER SCHOOL 2020

Exodus, Movement, a/the People: Critical Thinking and the Collective

Democracy: Genealogies, Concepts, and Practices

A conference hosted by the CHR from 17 – 18 December 2019 will explore the relationship between the genealogy, the concept and the practice of democracy.

Nsima Udo Wins Africa Thesis Award

Nsima Udo, CHR Doctoral Fellow with the SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory wins prestigious Africa Thesis Award from the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden in The Netherlands.

Other Lives of the Image: International Workshop in Visual History and Theory

From 4 – 6 October, the International Workshop in Visual History and Theory will convene around the theme Other Lives of the Image.

Other lives of the image

Call for papers: International Workshop in Visual History & Theory

On the Edge of History: Photographs & African Archives

International Workshop on Visual History & Theory