January 23, 2026
We are delighted to announce that the Centre for Humanities Research and the W. E. B. Du Bois Centre at the University of Massachusetts have recently signed a Memoranda of Understanding.
January 21, 2026
The African Critical Inquiry Programme is pleased to announce the 2026 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards to support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences and invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organise a workshop to
take place in 2027. ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).
January 19, 2026
The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape adds its voice to many others who are deeply concerned about the cancellation of Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy that was officially selected for the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2026.
November 5, 2025
Lester Kiewit speaks to Promesh Lalu, a UWC research professor, on the lessons we can learn from the Trojan Horse Massacre in 1985, as well as the misconceptions about those at grassroots level fighting the apartheid machine with intellect and limited resources.
October 14, 2025
The UK-SA Chair in Digital Humanities, held by Prof. Premesh Lalu, is welcoming international scholars to Cape Town in November to attend a three-day roundtable at Iyatsiba Lab in Woodstock.
October 14, 2025
We are delighted to announce that SA/UK Digital Humanities PhD fellow, Siyanda Kobokana, has been selected for the inaugural Paris Doctoral Research Residency at IFAS–Fondation Fiminco–ArTeC.
October 10, 2025
My history of madness in the Belgian Congo will rely on tracking transactional, micro, and urgent documents as gestures. These promise to open “spheres of ethos,” with human riddles, forms of upheaval, and violence (Agamben 1992).
October 10, 2025
Contemporary Black female artists have reclaimed the everyday labor and domestic motions women have historically performed, as artistic gestures in their own right. For example, the ceramic and bronze sculptures of the African-American artist Simone Leigh have referenced vernacular processes like washing chores and needlework.
October 10, 2025
In April 1964, the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) was launched in Dublin by Kader Asmal, a South-African professor of law in Trinity College. Lobbying for improved human rights and liberation in South Africa, the Movement raised awareness of the racism experienced by communities and campaigned for the release of political prisoners.
October 10, 2025
The book launch for Drafts in Action will take place on 13 October 2025 at ESPACE Diaphanes in Berlin.
October 10, 2025
We are delighted to announce that Undoing Apartheid by Premesh Lalu has been translated into Turkish and published by Afrika Vakfi Yayinevi. See below for more information about Undoing Apartheid and its Turkish translation, Apartheid’ı Ortadan Kaldırmak.
September 19, 2025
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.