Dr Valmont Layne, Next-Generation Scholar at the Centre for Humanities Research NRF Flagship, recently participated in a podcast for National Public Radio in the USA.

This interview emerges from Layne’s participation in the first CHCI African Humanities Initiative Workshop, held in Addis Ababa in 2019. The workshop was hosted by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) in collaboration with the College of Performing and Visual Art and the Center of African Studies at Addis Ababa University. Addis 2019 brought together artists, art commentators, and humanists from across the continent in order to re-conceptualise Africa as a theoretical category, as well as a prism to examine the contemporary world. Layne attended the conference with CHR Fellows Kim Gurney and Lauren van der Rede.

Layne is currently working on a documentary film on the musical history of the Cape as part of the Mellon funded Communicating the Humanities Documentary Film Course in the CHR.

The CHCI Africa Humanities Initiative Program Committee is co-convened by Jean Allman (Washington University, USA), Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis (Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia), Premesh Lalu (Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape), and Juan Obarrio (Universidad de San Martin, Argentina). The CHCI Africa Humanities Workshop is supported by a multi-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The CHR is pleased to join the CHCI in offering congratulations to artist Julie Mehretu, one of the leaders of Addis 2019, for being named on Time’s Top 100 Most Influential People of 2020 list.