A documentary feature film co-directed, co- filmed and co-produced by the CHR documentary film course convenor Francois Verster with fellow filmmaker Simon Wood, has just garnered the Best South African Documentary Award at the 2022 Durban International Film Festival.

The CHR is excited to announce Professor of International Relations Theory and African Political Thought, Siba Grovogui, gave a lecture at the Centre for Humanities Research.

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.

Founding CHR director and filmmaker Premesh Lalu will be in conversation with Rashid Lombard, Jayson King, Sylvia Mndunyelwa and Dinga Sikwebu about his new film The Double Futures of Athlone at the Encounters South African Documentary International Film Festival. The panel will be moderated by Valmont Layne.

On behalf of the Africa Institute, we are pleased to invite you to its Faculty and Fellows Seminar Series for a book launch and discussion on ,i>Love and Revolution in the Twentieth-Century Colonial and Postcolonial World.

The CHR is pleased to share that the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) will be hosting a launch for Love and Revolution in the Twentieth-Century Colonial and Postcolonial World: Perspectives from South Asia and Southern Africa.

The CHR in partnership with Zeitz MOCAA invites you to a public lecture by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer.

CHR Artist in Residence Buhle Ngaba is writing a screenplay for a groundbreaking puppetry production on the life of Charlotte Maxeke.

The Documentary Film Project at the CHR is key to rethinking the humanities PhD, incorporating audio-visual content into a reimagining of an aesthetic education.

The 2021 Barrydale Puppet Parade and Performance centres on a family living in Barrydale and the connection a young woman has with an ancient indigenous tree, Old Gwarrie, as well as with the wonderful world she calls home.

The CHR is very pleased to announce the publication of Love and Revolution in the Twentieth-Century Colonial and Postcolonial World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited by G. Arunima, Patricia Hayes, and Premesh Lalu.

CHR Artist in Residence Tony Bonani Miyambo performs Commission Continua for the 2021 National Arts Festival Experience.

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.

The CHR is excited to share The Colonel’s Stray Dogs, a new documentary feature by Doctoral Fellow Khalid Shamis that premiered at the 2021 Hot Docs Festival.

CHR Artist in Residence Tony Bonani Miyambo will be performing the award-winning Kafka’s Ape on 22 and 23 April 2021.

Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Western Cape, Prof. Tyrone Pretorius, has the pleasure of inviting you to a conversation with Prof. Ian Baucom on 12 April 2021.

Life-sized elephant puppet Mnumzane strolled across the Boschendal Estate on Sunday 14 March 2021, accompanied by little elephant Alfie, their path criss-crossed by the boisterous Dassie puppet.

The South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar will be hosting a launch of Other Lives of the Image, a special issue of the journal Kronos: Southern African Histories, on 9 March 2021.

The Centre for Humanities Research is proud to host a conversation with Mongane Wally Serote on the launch of his new epic poem Sikhahlel’ u-OR.

The Other Universals Consortium and CODESRIA invite you to a webinar with Professor Mahmood Mamdani about his new book Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.

CHR Acting-Director Professor Heidi Grunebaum was a guest on Soul City’s ‘It’s A Feminist Thing’.

Friday February 5th marks the 40th anniversary for the Handspring Puppet Company, collaborators in the aesthetic endeavours of the CHR, most particularly as creative mentors to the Ukwanda Puppetry and Design Collective, as well as the Laboratory of Kinetic Objects (LoKO).

Artist in Residence, Chumisa Fihle and Bruce Bowale, recently featured on Episode One of AVA’s podcast series titled ‘Lounge+’.

A CHR Webinar held by the Other Universals Consortium with Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

As part of the Communicating the Humanities research project, The CHR Documentary film class was in conversation with film editor and CHR Artist in Residence, Khalid Shamis, and film director Sara DF De Gouvia, about their award winning film The Sounds of Masks

As part of the Communicating the Humanities research project, The CHR Documentary film class was in conversation with award winning journalists and filmmakers, Richard Poplak and Dianna Neile, and producer Neil Brant, about their latest film Influence.

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

As South Africa celebrated Heritage Day this year, Boschendal Estate in Franschhoek provided an ideal backdrop for the first steps of Little Amal, a three-metre puppet created by the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa to represent the plight of a refugee child.

A CHR Webinar held jointly between Winter School and the Other Universals Consortium with Fadi Bardawil

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Heidi Grunebaum

As part of the Arts Research Africa dialogue, the CHR’s Professor Jane Taylor was interviewed

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Nancy Luxon

The New Normal Life is a film with puppetry about the pandemic, written, directed, performed, filmed and edited by the Ukwanda Puppetry and Design Collective

A Winter School webinar with Professor Rinaldo Walcott

The Other Universals consortium will be hosting an online seminar with Souleymane Bachir Diagne

The song was inspired by a request made to Selanvor (who is fast becoming one of Barrydale’s celebrated young artists) from residents of the village, to create an artistic response to the virus and the time we are in now.

The CHR’s A.W.Mellon Artist in Residence in Image and postdoctoral fellow, Kitso Lelliott was invited by the Kunstverein Braunschweig , Germany to create a work of video installations for the exhibition, THE FACULTY OF SENSING – Thinking With, Through, and by Anton Wilhelm Amo.

The virtual conversation took place on Thursday, 30 April 2020.

Professor Suren Pillay of the CHR participated in a conversation around xenophobic violence in South Africa.

The Centre for Humanities Research and partners Net vir Pret present the ninth annual Barrydale Giant Puppet Parade and Performance.

The CHR in partnership with African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and UCT School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatic and Wolff Architects hosted a lecture titled Soft Thresholds by practicing architect and educator Rahul Mehrotra.

In January, CHCI held its first Africa Humanities Workshop in Addis Ababa, hosted by Elizabeth Giorgis, Associate Professor of Art History, Criticism and Theory in the College of Performing and Visual Art and the Center for African Studies at Addis Ababa University.

The CHR and Net Vir Pret Annual Giant Puppet Parade and Performance, Barrydale, 16 December 2018

This short documentary film showcases the work of the Art Against Apartheid collection.

This short documentary film showcases the work of the Art Against Apartheid collection.

Reckoning with History, hosts a set of discussions around questions of how to imagine the future of ethnographic museums and collections in fashioning a postcolonial present.

The CHR is pleased to announce that three documentaries produced as part of the Documentary Film course will show at this years 20th Annual Encounters South African International Film Festival.

A collaborative project featuring CHR Artist in Residence Reza Khota

Jigna Desai (Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota)

The end of each year, for Handspring Puppet Company and the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR, DST-NRF Flagship), has in the past eight years culmin

A short documentary on the Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, held at the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town

In preparation for their upcoming show at this year’s CHCI meeting at the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, the duo revisit their Kora based […]

The CHR’s Factory of the Arts, composer Reza Khota in collaboration with the AfroAsia’s project’s fine artist and animator Kristy Stone present the first part of their work as a collaboration.

On Friday 23 June, Kelley gave a presentation titled Jazz and the Politics of Co-creation.

Conversations is a new series of public dialogues with jazz musicians and their legacies convened by the Factory of the Arts

The Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, Handspring Puppet Company, Ukwanda, Net Vir Pret, Magpie Art Collective and Stanley John Films present […]

The CHR's platform on Aesthetics and Politics invites you to a film screening as part of a series convened by CHR fellow, Dee Marco. The […]

A Film by Stanley John The 2016 Barrydale Puppet Parade and Performance, called Olifantland, a multilingual visual theatre show featuring five majestic life size elephant […]

The Factory of the Arts was recently featured in Cape Town Television’s weekly programme, New Horizons. The segment included interviews about the artists in residence […]

The 2016 Barrydale Puppet Parade and Performance brings you Olifantland, a multilingual visual theatre show featuring five majestic life size elephant puppets by Adrian Kohler from Handspring Puppet Company in collaboration with UKWANDA Puppet and Design Collective.

The Dullah Omar Centre for Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research (DST-NRF UWC Flagship) held a public seminar on Earlier […]

A discussion was held with the film director, Mira Nair, about her work and new film, “The Queen of Katwe” at the CHR on 20 […]

Dathini Mzayiya and Reza Khota Animation Commemoration for Emile Maurice Reza recorded separate photographic images of Dathini creating a charcoal sketch of Emile Maurice. He […]

Arts Education Workshops in Puppetry, Performance and Visual Arts Arts Education workshops were conducted with 20 Grade 10 learners from Chris Hani and Luhlaza Secondary […]

A colloquium marking 20 years since the publication of Mahmood Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject

People You May Know was a collaborative performance and exhibition featuring Dathini Mzayiya, Brydon Bolton, Reza Khota, Thokozani Mthiyane, and Daniel Grey, held at the Factory of the Arts.

People You May Know was a collaborative performance and exhibition featuring Dathini Mzayiya, Brydon Bolton, Reza Khota, Thokozani Mthiyane, and Daniel Grey, held at the […]

Professor Mahmood Mamdani delivered a public lecture titled “South Sudan: The Road to Civil War’ on 18 August 2016 at the University of the Western Ca

2015 Barrydale Festival with Net Vir Pret and Handspring Puppet Company

The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape is proud to announce the debut of two short films and a full length film at t

Brian Raftopoulos delivered a lecture titled From Rhodes(ia) to Zimbabwe: Rhodes Must Fall, Post-colonial Politics, and University Transformation, on 16 March 2016. It was the […]

The Dullah Omar Centre for Critical Thought in African Humanities, a satellite project of the Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities based in Athlone, […]

On 20 February 2015, the Centre for Humanities Research hosted the first Distinguished Lecture in its African Humanities and Letters Lecture Series for 2015 at […]

Annual Deans Distinguished Lecture – UWC Arts Faculty presented by Prof. John Mowitt.
Theme: “The Humanities and the University in Ruin”

Premesh Lalu, Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa reflects on the effects of Apartheid on the creative fields and aesthetic education in South Africa.

Open Design Festival, Cape Town City Hall, 13 – 23 August 2014
Quarter Gallery, Regis Centre for Art, University of Minnesota, 18 November – 10 December 2014

Art.b Gallery, Bellville, 8 May – 18 June 2012

Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 18 August 2012 – 12 April 2013

Jon Berndt Collection An artist, designer, photographer, author and scholar, Jon Berndt (1950-2010) was born in Ladybrand in what was then the Orange Free State. […]

Iziko South African National Gallery (Iziko SANG), 16 February 2013