Kim Gurney’s latest publication for The Conversation discusses five indie art spaces in African cities worth knowing more about.

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.

The CHR’s Premesh Lalu will be giving the annual African Studies Lecture at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University, on Monday 12 May.

Erica Fretwell’s Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling (2020) raises crucial questions about the making of a concept of difference through marshaling the senses to the ends of a sensory order in postbellum United States.

This conversation between Erich Hörl and Premesh Lalu draws on their extended conversation on efforts to link discordant temporal and spatial encounters with the idea of the university and how, more importantly, to care for the future of its educational responsibilities.

The book launch for Texturing Difference: “Black Consciousness Philosophy”and the “Script of Man”, by Maurits van Bever Donker, will take place at the Iyatsiba Lab on Friday 14 March.

Maurits van Bever Donker’s Texturing Difference “Black Consciousness Philosophy”and the “Script of Man”, was published with Polity Press in December 2024.

The CHR is pleased to announce the publication of Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects, which includes a chapter by senior lecturer and convenor of the Laboratory of Kinetic Objects (LoKO), Aja Marneweck, and Handspring Puppet Company co-founder Jill Joubert.

In November 2024, the Centre for Humanities Research at UWC present Pro-Vocation: Roots and Wings, the 4th iteration of Pro-Vocation, in partnership with the UNIMA Professional Training Commission, the UNIMA Africa Commission, and UNIMA SA.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Kronos: Southern African Histories under the theme of Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method, edited by Dr Valmont Layne, CHR, and Dr Aidan Erasmus, Department of Historical Studies, UWC.

Architectural plans of a former house inspire the narrative structure of a new book by Kim Gurney, called Flipside: The inadvertent Archive, which takes the reader on a thematic journey from room to room as it follows the trail of specific archival artefacts lodged in the building’s attic.

Institution-building as artistic practice is the topic of a paper published by the CHR’s Dr Kim Gurney, as part of artistic research conference proceedings. ‘Epistemic Disobedience’ posits Nafasi Art Space in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as a paradigmatic example of independent art spaces in Africa and their key working principles.

The CHR’s Dr Kim Gurney has contributed a chapter to a comprehensive book about the oeuvre of Bruce Arnott (1938-2018) – artist, academic and former director of The Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT.

The latest Afrika Focus is now available. Edited by the CHR’s, Maurits van Bever Donker and Lwando Scott, this volume focuses on the question of transformative constitutionalism.

On the Subject of Citizenship: Late colonialism in the world today brings together reflections on citizenship, political violence, race, ethnicity and gender, by some of the most critical voices of our times.

Roundtable and Book Presentation

Join the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs for the book launch of Premesh Lalu’s Undoing Aprtheid.

The CHR’s Premesh Lalu’s much anticipated new book, Undoing Apartheid, appears in November 2022 with Polity Press. The book responds to the CHR’s inaugural question of the meaning of post-apartheid freedom, especially through sustained research projects on aesthetic education, the becoming technical of the human, and communicating the humanities

The CHR warmly congratulates Andre Odendaal, The Vice Chancellor’s Writer in Residence hosted by the CHR, on the publication of his latest book, Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africas Constitution.

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.

CHR Fellow Ali Ridha Khan invited to write the Editors’ Note for ODD Magazine’s December 2021 issue on Joy.

Kronos: Southern African Histories is seeking submissions for the 2022 special issue “Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method.”

CHR Doctoral Fellow Lee Walters invited to contribute to Dynamic Traditions , a reader published by Elisa Erkelenz and Katja Heldt around the 100th anniversary of Donaueschinger Musiktage.

The CHR warmly congratulated Doctoral Fellow Nsima Udo on the publication of his MA thesis as a monograph.

The CHR is pleased to share “The Quintessential Freedom Fighter,” written by CHR Research Associate Seelan Naidoo and published in Daily Maverick. 

CHR Research Affiliate Tareq Baconi publishes “What Apartheid Means for Israel” in The New York Review of Books.

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 confronts the momentous challenges facing theatre makers with his solo show Commission Continua, performed online for the 2021 National Arts Festival.

CHR Early Career Doctoral Fellow Reza Khota debuted his new improvisation on guitar and pedals as part of NewMusicSA’21 Digital Indaba.

The CHR congratulates former doctoral fellow Okechukwu Nwafor on the publication of Aso Ebi: Dress, Fashion, Visual Culture, and Urban Cosmopolitanism in West Africa by University of Michigan Press.

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

Contributions by Staff and Fellows of the Centre for Humanities Research to edited volumes represent a diverse engagement with the centre’s academic inquiries. The following list shows publications from the latter years of the centre’s output.

Staff and Fellows of the Centre for Humanities Research regularly publish articles and reviews in local and international journals, applying the centre’s intellectual inquiries across a wide range of disciplines and interests.

The CHR is excited to announce the publication of Other Lives of the Image, a special issue of the journal Kronos: Southern African Histories.

The CHR is delighted to announce the publication of Ruins from CHR Director, Professor Heidi Grunebaum, in Trickbox of Memory: Essays on Power and Disorderly Pasts published by punctum books.

The CHR congratulates director, Professor Heidi Grunebaum, on the publication of her latest chapter titled: ‘Zanzibar, circa 1996’ in The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century. The collection is co-edited by Isabel Balseiro and Zachariah Rapola.

Dr Kim Gurney, Next Generation scholar at the CHR, has created a limited edition photobook about life in the artisanal workshop of Sets & Devices in Salt River, Cape Town.

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

The CHR is delighted to announce the publication of Acting Director and Associate Professor, Heidi Grunebaum, poetry collection ‘The Book of the Missing’.

The CHR congratulates Patricia Hayes, SARChI Chair in Visual History, and Gary Minkley, SARChI Chair in Social Change, on the publication of their latest co-edited book Ambivalent.

The CHR is delighted to announce the latest publication from CHR Next Gen researcher, Ross Truscott, titled ‘The Dream of the Royal Road: Psychoanalysis and the Post’ published in Cultural Critique.

The CHR congratulates post-doctoral fellow, Dr Rike Sitas, on her latest publication: ‘Creative Cities, Graffiti and Culture‐Led Development in South Africa: Dlala Indima (‘Play Your Part’) in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

The CHR is delighted to announce the publication of honours fellow, Kiasha Naidoo’s latest journal article “ Neoliberalism’s last breath: thinking politico-economic well-being during and beyond COVID-19” in Revista de Filosofie Aplicată.

Green Screen, a newly launched work of creative nonfiction, follows the life of a film set created for a commercial by a team of artisans in Salt River, Cape Town, and how it morphs into a surprising series of second lives. The reader navigates this digital storymap online through a series of geolocations, visuals and text, authored by Kim Gurney and published by CHR.

A new publication by Aja Marneweck explores the multifaceted process of creating the large-scale annual public puppetry event, The Barrydale Giant Puppet Parade, in the rural town of Barrydale, South Africa.

A new paper by Professor Premesh Lalu has been published in Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory.

Professor Premesh Lalu celebrates David Koloane’s life as a purveyor of “a lover’s discourse” and he is described by former president Thabo Mbeki as “a fighter for the liberation of our people.”

and the Book Launch of Consensus as Democracy in Africa by Prof Bernard Matolino (UKZN)

James Chandler acknowledges the CHR in a publication on aesthetic education and sensibility.

Missing and Missed: Subject, Politics, Memorialisation (Special Issue)

Professor Premesh Lalu

Tracing the Mbira Sound Archive in Zimbabwe

William Kentridge: That Which is Not Remembered 

Out of History, Unsettled History, and Remains of the Social Review by Crain Soudien.

2017 Special Issue edited by Ross Truscott and Maurits Van Bever Donker

The CHR would like to congratulate Migrating Violence Postdoctoral Fellow Fred Bidandi

Thinking the State from Africa: Political Theory, Eurocentrism and Concrete Politics

A new publication by CHR Architectural Fellow Ilze Wolff

by Premesh Lalu (HSRC Press, 2009) In 1996, as South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was beginning its hearings, Nicholas Gcaleka, a healer diviner from […]

by Jane Taylor in Performing The Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (Eds) Milija Gluhovic and Jisha Menon (2017) With a foreword from Rustom Bharucha, this […]

Edited by Premesh Lalu and Noëleen Murray

The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape is proud to be associated with the publication of   Awakenings: The Art […]

The CHR would like to congratulate doctoral fellow Mwayi Lusaka on the publication of his article.

Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity

a new publication by Senior Researcher Dr. Heidi Grunebaum

The CHR and the Department of History, UWC invites you to a joint launch

The CHR and Wits University Press is pleased to announce the publication of: Remains of the Social: Desiring the Post-Apartheid Edited by Maurits van Bever […]

Please join us for the launch of ‘Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics’, a new book by Professor Michael Neocosmos

Jane Taylor

The CHR is excited to announce that I See You, a play by Mongi Mthombeni, has won Best New South African Script at the 52nd […]

The CHR is pleased to announce a new publication by post-doctoral fellow Bongani Ndhlovu.

The CHR is pleased to announce a new publication by former fellow Vincent Van Bever Donker.

The CHR is pleased to announce a new publication Next Generation Scholar Ross Truscott.

Edited by Jung Ran Forte, Paolo Israel and Leslie Wits

The CHR is pleased to announce a new publication under the Migrating Violence research platform by Masters Fellow Clinaret Munguambe. The paper is titled Nationalism […]

The CHR is pleased to announce a new publication by Senior Researcher at the Centre for Humanities Research and Associate Professor Suren Pillay and former […]

CHR Director Professor Premesh Lalu delivered an address at the media launch of Science Forum South Africa 2016 on 1 November at the Cape Town […]

Duke University Press, Clarke’s Bookshop and the Centre for Humanities Research, UWC invite you to the launch of the new book by Nancy Rose Hunt (Professor of History & African Studies, University of Florida)

You are invited by Wits University Press, UWC’s Centre for Humanities Research and The Book Lounge to pay tribute to the memory of eminent historian and activist Martin Legassick at the launch of his posthumously published book