Research Chairs


NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory

Visual History & Theory is a research platform at the University of the Western Cape that promotes a critical engagement with the image in relation to other forms of knowledge production, creativity and contest in Africa and elsewhere.

Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance

The Andrew W Mellon Chair Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance holds together several interdisciplinary modes of enquiry.

Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair

The Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair emerges out of a longstanding collaboration between the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at UWC and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute (TLRH) at Trinity College Dublin that has focused on colonialism, partition, postcoloniality and race. Relationships and networks forged through these institutions’ fellowship programmes have laid the groundwork for the establishment of this research chair.

UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities

The British Academy/National Research Foundation UK-SA Bilateral Digital Humanities Chair in Cultures of Technology, held by Professor Premesh Lalu in the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), convenes an international study network that traces how the exercise of power relates to the co-evolution of the human and technology.

Research Chair News


Film screening: James Joyce’s Ulysses by Adam Low

The Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair and the Documentary Film Programme of the CHR, will be screening James Joyce’s ULYSSES  (88 minutes, UK, 2022) by Adam Low on Thursday 27 February 2025, followed by a Q&A with the director.

A conversation on biographies between Margaret Kelleher and Ciraj Rassool

On Thursday 31 October, the CHR will be hosting a conversation on biographies between Margaret Kelleher (University College Dublin) and Ciraj Rassool (UWC) under the auspices of the Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair (CMMR).

Visual History and Theory International Workshop: Deep Time, Shallow Time

The 2024 Visual History and Theory Workshop will take place on 19-20 September at the CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab.

Vision, touch, and duration: reflections on photographic temporalities and curatorial practice.

This year’s Visual History and Theory Workshop Keynote will be delivered by Christopher Morton, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair public lecture: Neither Here Nor There, by Rita Duffy.

The CHR welcomes the Maxeke–Robinson Research Chair, Rita Duffy, will be giving a public lecture as part of the CHR’s Winter School programme on Wednesday 24 July and the launch of the CHR’s Humanities hub on 30 July.

Call for Papers: Visual History and Theory International Workshop: Deep time, shallow time.

Abstracts are invited for participation in the annual workshop in Visual History & Theory to be held at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, on 19-20 September 2024.

Film screening: ‘Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens’ by Adam Low

The Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair and the Documentary Film Programme of the CHR, will be screening ‘Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens’ (88 minutes, Ireland, 2019) by Adam Low on Wednesday 17 April 2024, which will be followed by a QnA with the director.

Inaugural Seminar for the New Ecologies of the Subject research platform

A Conversation in the Humanities in Session seminar series at the Centre for Humanities Research, part of the Advanced Research Seminar.

Imagining futures: Conversations from Ireland to South Africa

This event is scheduled to take place at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art on March 13, 2024, as part of the Embassy’s St. Patrick’s Day programme.

Visual History and Theory Workshop
Power Remaking selves, archives, environments

This year’s NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory Workshop will take place between 27-28 July. It coalesces around the title, ‘Power: Remaking selves, archives, environments’, and will include a keynote by Leigh Raiford who is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Power: remaking selves, archives, environments

Visual History & Theory Workshop 27-28 July 2023 Call for Papers

DSI-NRF Postgraduate Student Funding Call for the 2024 Academic Year

The DSI and NRF are pleased to announce a call for new applications for DSI-NRF Postgraduate Student Funding for the academic year 2024. All continuing students who are eligible for a second or third year of funding must submit a Progress Report and not a new application.

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.

Transience & the Image

Workshop in Visual History & Theory 2022

Durban International Film Festival: The Double Futures of Athlone

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.

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.

African Critical Inquiry Program Announces 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards

The CHR warmly congratulates recipients of the 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards, namely Vanessa Chen, Min’enhle Ncube and Suzana Sousa.

Transience and the image: Call for Papers: Workshop in Visual History & Theory

The CHR encourages the call for papers for the Transience and the image workshop to be convened from th1 19-20 August 2022 at the Centre for Humanities Research.

Doctoral Fellowships (2022-5): New Archival Visions

We are pleased to share that the University of the Western Cape is offering four doctoral fellowships based at the Centre for Humanities Research to commence in 2022.

Performing Charlotte Maxeke

With 2021 being declared “The Year of Charlotte Maxeke,” the DSI-NRF Flagship on Critical thought in the African Humanities at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, has embarked on a special production based on the life of Maxeke.

Breaking Ground at Greatmore

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.

NRF Call: Postgraduate Student Funding for 2022

The CHR is excited to share the DSI and NRF call for new applications for Postgraduate Student Funding in 2022.

A Conversation with Patricia Hayes

Professor Patricia Hayes of the CHR will be in conversation with Professor Tamar Garb of UCL about Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History

The Way to Greatmore

Inviting Artists and Scholars to Reimagine the Future of the Humanities Beyond the Divided City.

ACIP: CALL FOR PROPOSALS TO ORGANISE A WORKSHOP

The African Critical Inquiry Programme invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organise a workshop to take place in 2022.

SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory Review

The SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory underwent its first-phase review in 2020 and has been awarded a second phase of funding for 2021-5 by the National Research Foundation (NRF).

Ambivalent. Photography and Visibility in African History Book Launch

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

Leaving Zion

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Heidi Grunebaum

Publics and Policing: Spies, Surveillance, and Colonial Subjects in Anti-Colonial French Politics

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Nancy Luxon

The Black Aquatic: On Water, Art and Black Movement

A Winter School webinar with Professor Rinaldo Walcott

WINTER SCHOOL 2020

Exodus, Movement, a/the People: Critical Thinking and the Collective

Democracy: Genealogies, Concepts, and Practices

A conference hosted by the CHR from 17 – 18 December 2019 will explore the relationship between the genealogy, the concept and the practice of democracy.

Nsima Udo Wins Africa Thesis Award

Nsima Udo, CHR Doctoral Fellow with the SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory wins prestigious Africa Thesis Award from the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden in The Netherlands.

Other Lives of the Image: International Workshop in Visual History and Theory

From 4 – 6 October, the International Workshop in Visual History and Theory will convene around the theme Other Lives of the Image.

Other lives of the image

Call for papers: International Workshop in Visual History & Theory

On the Edge of History: Photographs & African Archives

International Workshop on Visual History & Theory