PROFESSOR SIONA O'CONNELL

is an African Studies scholar/practitioner in the School of Arts at the University of Pretoria. She is widely respected for her work on the effects of race-based land dispossesion. In addition to directing and producing 10 documentary films, her co-edited book 'Hanging on a Wire' won the 2018 National Institute for The Humanities and Social Sciences (nihss) Humanities and Social Sciences award for the best non-fiction edited volme. Her monograph on forced removals in Cape Town, 'An Impossible Turn: Cape Town's Forced Removals" continues to garner broad recommendation. O'Connell was a Trilateral Reconnection Project fellow (Brown University), is a Brown international advanced research institute's (BIARI) alumnus, was the NEH distinguished visiting professor of the Humanities at Colgate University in the USA in 2018-19 as well as visiting professor at Aarhus University in Denmark in 2021 and 2022. She is the South African lead investigator on an international interdisciplinary project bringing together climate change, heritage, food, and resilience. O'Connell is the chair person of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF) Humanities standing committee and a founding member of critical African Studies at the University of Pretoria (castup.ac.za).

PROFESSOR ZETHU MATEBENI 

is South Africa Research Chair in Sexualities, Gender and Queer Studies at the University of Fort Hare. Zethu works collaboratively with activists, scholars and artists and creates interdisciplinary scholarly work on queer issues, critical race studies and decolonisation. She has been involved in decolonising movements in South Africa, including #RhodesMustFall and #AlternativeInclusivePride. She has been visiting professor at the  Women's Gender and Sexualities Studies (WGSS) Departement at Yale University, and the Marie Jahoda professorial Fellow at Ruhr University Bochum. Zethu has published various key volumes on African sexualities and gender diversity including 'Reclaiming African: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identites (2014)' as well as numerous essays, articles and poetry.

LINDA CHERNIS (SHE/HER)

is a South African archivist and heritage practitioner who has worked in museums and archives for the past 15 years. She has a passion for bringing history, heritage, and the arts to the public. Linda became the archivist at the GALA Queer Archive in Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2015. She recently completed her Masters in history at the University of the Witwatersrand.

MAKHOSAZANA XABA (SHE/HER)

is an award-winning anthologist and short story writer. She has published four collections of poetry, a collection of short stories and edited and co-edited six anthologies. In 2022 she co-edited 'Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi & Es'kia Mphahlele'. With Athambile Masola she introduced a book titled 'Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home (2023)'. Over the years she has written biographical essays on Noni Jabavu as she works towards Jabavu's literary biography. She is currently an associate professor of practice based at the Centre for the Study on Race, Gender and Class at the University of Johannesburg.

FERRIAL ADAM

is an environmental and climate justice activist. She is presently the executive manager of WaterCAN - a network of activist citizen scientists working in the water sector. She has completed her PhD on 'Citizen Science and Environmental Justice in the Water Sector'. She has worked for more than 15 years on environmental and climate change issues and challenges at both international and national levels. She believes that environmental justice and climate change straddle science, human rights, environment, economics and governance.

NIQ MHLONGO

is a Sowetan-born novelist, short story writer, travel journalist, essayist, editor, and educator who graduated from Wits University with a B.A. degree (African Literature and Politcal Studies) in 1997. He has written four novels - 'Dog Eat Dog (2004)', 'After Tears (2007)', Way Back Home (2013)' and 'Paradise in Gaza (2020)' - and a collection of short stories, 'Affluenza (2016)', 'Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree (2018)' and 'For You, I'd Steal a Goat (2022)'. He also edited an essay collection called 'Black Tax, Burden or Ubuntu (2019)'. Two short stories anthologies called 'Joburg Noir (2020)' and 'Hauntings(2021)'. His Novel 'Dog Eat Dog' won the Spanish literary award La Mar de Letras Internacional in 2006. He has also won several literary prizes in South Africa for his work, including the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Prize and the Humanities and Social Science, and the K. Sello Duiker Literary Award. His work has been translated into several languages, including French, Dutch, Flemish, German, Burmese, Spanish, and Italian.

VICTORIA COLLIS-BUTHELEZI

Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi is Associate Professor in English at the University of Johannesburg and Director of UJ's Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class. She is a senior research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS) and a research associate at the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department (AAADS) at Columbia University. Her research is on black intellectual and literary histories and has appeared in Small Axe, Callaloo, Boundary2 and the UK Journal of Arts and the Humanities. Her current book project explores global frames for understanding blackness in early twentieth century Cape Town. Collis-Buthelezi is on the editorial committee for Small Axe and an editor of the polity critical South Book Series as well as Peter Lang's 'Race and Resistance in the Long Twentieth Century'.
 

Walking Tour Ferreirarsdorp

Victoria Collis-Buhelezi

Thursday 28 September 2023, 10am-12pm

Soweto Visit

Niq Mhlongo

Friday 29 September 2023, 3-5pm

Pavement Booksellers Tour

Saturday 30 September 2023, 10am-12:30pm

Visit to The Forge

Saturday 30 September 2023, 3-6pm