Dr Nomusa Makhubu
Dr Nomusa Makhubu is a senior lecturer of art history at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Michaelis School of Fine Art, and has a PhD in art history from Rhodes University.
Makhubu’s research focuses on art interventionism, popular culture and social engagement in African visual art. Recognising the need for broader creative mentorship, collaborative practice and socially responsive arts pedagogy, her research is aimed at developing mechanisms for incorporating socially engaged curricula in the creative arts.
The research explores public artworks that pose critical questions about the political role of art as means of mediating gender, race and class in African contexts, and seeks to facilitate active transnational collaborations through workshops and creative interventions.
She has a NRF Y1 rating and has authored nine journal articles (seven in international journals and two in local ones), three book chapters, 22 conference papers and two keynote speeches. Her artworks have been shown at 51 exhibitions. She has had articles accepted by three journals — Third Text, Journal of Contemporary African Studies and Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Makhubu co-edited a special issue of Third Text in 2013 and is currently working on a book manuscript. She has been a reviewer for international and local journals such as Africa Today, IKON: Journal of Iconographic Studies, the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and Social Dynamics and is on the editorial board of the Oyasaf Journal of Art. She has successfully supervised four master’s students, and is currently supervising three master’s and two PhD students.
Makhubu is a member of the South African Young Academy of Science and the College Art Association International Committee, the chair of the Africa South Art Initiative, and a member of the research team for Comparing “WE’s”: Cosmopolitanism, Emancipation, Postcoloniality at Lisbon University’s Centre for Comparative Studies. She is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. She was an Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation Research Fellow in 2010, an African Studies Association Presidential Fellow in 2016, and an Institute for Creative Art Writing Fellow in 2017. Makhubu is an alumna of the College Art Association-Getty International Program. She teaches in the Stanford University Bing Overseas Studies Program. She will start a Harvard-UCT Mandela Fellowship tenure in August 2017.