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.

Specifically, we are interested to understand the consequences of technology on culture. To this end, our study is focused on how humanistic discourse and arts practices mediates understandings of the expansion in technological resources in the scientific revolutions from the nineteenth century to the present. The chair invites graduate students, faculty, and artists in residence at the CHR and UWC more broadly an inquiry of the cultural effects of scientific revolutions in thermodynamics, psychotechnics/psychophysics, and cybernetics, and their consequences for debates about techno-feudalism, partition and difference, ecology and environmentality, biopolitics, life philosophy, magical realism, and science fiction amongst others.

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UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities: Honours, Masters and Doctoral Fellowships

The Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) invites applications for Honours, Masters and Doctoral awards in 2025, convened under the auspices of the UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities.

UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities: Postdoctoral Fellowships.

The Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) invites applications for postdoctoral awards in 2025 convened under the auspices of the UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities. In this round, the CHR will make two fellowship awards.

Erich Hörl appointed as Extraordinary Professor at the CHR.

The CHR is delighted to announce that Erich Hörl has been appointed as extraordinary professor at the CHR, strengthening our partnership with the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society, University of Lüneburg.

Professor Premesh Lalu Awarded UK-SA Bilateral Research Chair in Digital Humanities

The CHR is delighted to announce that Professor Premesh Lalu has been awarded the British Academy/NRF UK-SA Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities.

Workshop: What is the University?

Between the 12th and the 18th of March CHR faculty and colleagues from the Leuphana Institute of Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society met for a ten-day workshop on the question: What is the University for?

February 19, 2025

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.
May 29, 2023

Undoing Apartheid

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
June 22, 2022

Beyond Nostalgia: Reimagining Post-Apartheid Freedom

Founding CHR director and filmmaker Premesh Lalu will be in conversation with Rashid Lombard, Jayson King, Sylvia Mndunyelwa and Dinga Sikwebu about his new film The Double Futures of Athlone at the Encounters South African Documentary International Film Festival. The panel will be moderated by Valmont Layne.