Founded in 2006, the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape has fast become recognized as the leading Humanities Research Centre in South Africa.
Director Professor Premesh Lalu believes that in setting itself the task of redefining the humanities, the CHR offers a refreshingly different approach to the humanities where on any given day you could encounter discussion ranging from puppetry arts to political communities. Drawing together masters’, doctoral and post-doctoral fellows from around the world, the CHR strives to develop unifying and interdisciplinary themes in the humanities that will enable a renewal of its study in Africa.
The dynamism for which the CHR has become known is anchored in the lively South African Contemporary Humanities and History Seminar established in 1993 and its numerous research and reading programmes. This is the enabling environment that is drawing together a new generation of leaders in the humanities around emerging research themes and platforms.
Amongst these the CHR hosts research on War and the Everyday, Aesthetics and Politics (in partnership with the Handspring Puppet Company), Love and Revolution (with University’s of Fort Hare and Minnesota), Violence in Transition (with CSVR), African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies (with the department of History) and Cities in Transition and Multilingual Citizenship projects.
Contrary to perceptions of the crisis in the humanities, the CHR has become a model for national debates on the possibilities for effective and critical humanities study in a post-apartheid South Africa. The research of the CHR contributes to debate and discussion on the reconstitution of the study of the humanities in Africa, while also serving as a platform for new doctoral research.
The CHR has maintained its strong traditional partnerships with universities in the USA and Europe, but is increasingly joining forces with institutions elsewhere in Africa, Asia and Latin America committed to a postcolonial redefinition of the humanities.
In recent months, the CHR has been invited into a continent-wide discussion with colleagues at Makerere University in Uganda on the formation of a path-breaking interdisciplinary programme for a course-work Ph.D in the humanities and social sciences. This initiative will have lasting consequences in our efforts to build a next generation of scholars in the humanities and social sciences attuned to what it means to be at a university in Africa.
The CHR is intent on taking debates and insights of the humanities into public forums, where they might be contested, challenged and altered. Through its research, it has intervened in public discussions on xenophobia, the politics of the Middle East, truth and justice, and the making of new political communities in Africa.
It has also partnered with IZIKO National Gallery, the Robben Island Museum, District Six Museum, the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust and the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum to facilitate public engagements by hosting joint public lectures, seminars, academic course offerings and publication. In many ways, the CHR is offering us a glimpse of what a future humanities study might look like in a postcolonial society if it is to flourish.