Aidan Erasmus
DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellow
Dr. Aidan Erasmus is based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of the Western Cape. His research encompasses the comparative histories of race, technology, and sense, with a special interest in sound.
He has presented and published on topics relating to sound, technology, music, and memory, and organized workshops and conferences on these and other related areas of inquiry. Dr Aidan Erasmus completed his doctoral studies as a DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellow at the CHR before becoming a Next Generation Scholar at the centre. In his doctoral dissertation, Dr Erasmus invested in constituting sound as a modality through which to think the resonant contours of imperial war, through the examination of aesthetic production in music, radio and cinema under apartheid and the contemporary moment. In 2023, he co-edited a special issue of Kronos: Southern African Histories on the question of sound and historical method with Dr. Valmont Layne under the theme “Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method”. He is currently engaged in a book project on the question of sound and sense in the intellectual life of Solomon Plaatje, an early twentieth-century African intellectual. provisionally titled An Anticolonial Sense: Sol Plaatje, Sonic Repertoires, and the Making of a World to Come. He also co-convenes the Sound Working Group at the Iyatsiba Lab at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, and through this work, has been involved in OSCILLATIONS: Sonic Inquiries and Practices, a successful sound art residency and exhibition project between Cape Town and Berlin submitted to the German Federal Cultural Foundation TURN2 Fund in partnership with Akademie Der Künste, Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur/Klangkunst. He has also participated in several collaborative research groups such as the Forensic History Group at the University of the Western Cape, The (in)Audible Past research project convened by the University of Fort Hare and the University of Basel, and several other collaborative projects with local and international scholars and artists. As a lecturer, he teaches courses in African history and historiography, including a senior undergraduate course titled ‘Making Sense: Sight, Sound, Technology, and Race in African History’ that inducts students into both research and practice-based explorations of the history of sight and sound reproduction technologies in Africa.
Related News
Award Announcement: Oscillations wins Research and Innovation award at UWC.
The CHR is delighted to announce that Sound Working Group Convenors, Aidan Erasmus, Valmont Layne and Lee Walters have received a joint Creative Arts Output Award for their outstanding contributions to Research and Innovation at the University of the Western Cape.
Sound Art Exhibition (27 April – 19 May): Oscillations – Cape Town to Berlin – Sonic Inquiries and Practices
Critical listening is the first step toward an ethics and aesthetics of care and freedom. Discarding listening habits and accepting new sound qualities afford access to other layers of history and experience.
Kronos, Oral/Aural: Pastness and sound as medium and method
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.
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.
“Don’t speak of letters when you mean sounds”: Phonemes, diacritics, and the transcriptive acoustemology of Sol Plaatje
Dr Aidan Erasmus of the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape will deliver a paper titled “Don’t speak of letters when you mean sounds”: Phonemes, diacritics, and the transcriptive acoustemology of Sol Plaatje as part of the South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar.
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.
DSI-NRF Early Career Doctoral Fellows: Meet the Next Generation
The CHR’s Flagship fellowship programme for early career scholars is at the heart of a deep commitment to transforming higher education at the doctoral level in South Africa.
Book Chapters List
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.
List of Articles (2016-present)
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.
Reckoning with Africa and the Desire for a Global Mnemoscape
A new paper by Next Generation Scholars Lauren van der Rede and Aidan Erasmus has appeared in a global-e Special Issue Series on Mnemonic Solidarity in the Global Memory Space.
The Curricular and the Global, the Tropic and the Taxonomic
The Global Humanities Curriculum Workshop held in December of 2018 enabled a rich set of connections and convergences around questions of the curriculum.
Five CHR Fellows to Graduate
UWC December Graduation features CHR doctoral and masters fellows