Centre for Film and Media Studies - UCT

Wonderful to have the staff from Ogilvy come to the department and speak about opportunities in the advertising and brand management space. Students are encouraged to visit the Ogilvy South Africa site and apply for the prestigious young executive programme! Og.Ogilvy.Co.Za

Book Discussion - Lilian Ngoyi: A Life

CFMS Associate Professor Martha Evans led a discussion on her latest book, 'Lilian Ngoyi: A Life', as part of the CFMS Tuesday seminars at UCT today.

Martha shared insights from her research into the archives, interviews with family, and scouring through transcripts to piece together a beautiful biography about a woman who was pivotal in South Africa's struggle against apartheid.

An amazing opportunity this Thursday!

Are you in your final year of studies or a post-graduate student? Then this is for you!

Come and find out all about working for the premier advertising company in South Africa - Ogilvy.

Join us:

📅 Thursday, 13 August
🕑 13h00
📍 AC Jordan 4A

See you there!

Book Discussion - Lilian Ngoyi: A Life by Martha Evans

In celebration of Women's Month, author and CFMS Associate Professor Martha Evans will be leading a book discussion about her new book 'Lilian Ngoyi: A Life'.

In this talk, Martha Evans talks about the life and times of Lilian Ngoyi, the formidable leader of the 1956 Women’s March, as well as the research and writing of the first standalone full-length biography of MaNgoyi, recently published by Penguin Random House.

Join us:
📅 Tuesday, 11 August 2026
🕐 13h00 to 14h00
📍 CFMS Seminar Room, A205, AC Jordan 3rd Floor

About Lilian Ngoyi: A Life
Lilian Ngoyi was a trailblazing figure in South Africa’s liberation struggle – an electrifying orator, a key architect of the 1956 Women’s March, and the first woman elected to the ANC’s National Executive Committee. Yet her life story has never been fully told.

In this authoritative and deeply researched biography, Martha Evans brings MaNgoyi vividly to life. Born in a Pretoria location, widowed young and raising her family in poverty, Ngoyi truly represented the people she spoke for and was the most senior ANC woman leader not married to a high-profile man, forging her own path through her political instinct, charisma and formidable courage.

From the Garment Workers’ Union to the Federation of South African Women and the ANC Women’s League, she rose to national prominence, travelling abroad as a representative of the liberation movement, standing alongside the giants of her era, and organising one of the largest protest marches South Africa had seen. Then came arrest, the Treason Trial, solitary confinement and years of banning – in an attempt to silence her voice and remove her from the public stage.

Drawing on letters, speeches and rich archival sources, this compelling biography restores Ngoyi to her rightful place in history and reveals the complex, deeply human woman behind the icon.

About Martha Evans
Martha Evans is an associate professor at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Broadcasting the End of Apartheid: Live Television and the Birth of the New South Africa (2014), Speeches that Shaped South

Prof Haupt delivered a keynote at Crossroads 2026 in Brazil

Prof Adam Haupt presented a keynote titled "'Complicit in their Platform of Silence': Decolonial Media & Cultural Studies in the Age of (post?) Empire" at the Association of Cultural Studies Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Toward an African Model of Media System

The Centre for Film and Media Studies invites you to a research seminar by Dr Bernadine Jones (CFMS- University of Cape Town) and Professor Adrian Hadland (University of Sterling).

📅 04/08/2026

🕐 12:45 for 13h:00-14h:00.

📍 CFMS Staff/seminar room (AC Jordan 3rd level)

Abstract:
More than two decades after Hallin and Mancini’s Comparing Media Systems (2004), comparative media scholarship still struggles to account adequately for African media-state relations. Existing applications frequently force African cases into Western-derived typologies, treating divergence as deficiency or institutional failure. Colonial bifurcation and postcolonial institutional hybridity produce fragmented and uneven forms of political authority. These, in turn, shape media ownership, regulation, professional norms, political parallelism, and the distinction between formal and informal journalistic practice.

This conceptual article asks how the historically specific logics of postcolonial African states reshape the dimensions through which media-state relations are understood. Drawing on scholarship on the postcolonial African state, comparative political communication, migration studies, sociology and African journalism, it argues that colonial legacies, bifurcated authority, dominant-party rule, informality, and rapid change fundamentally reshape relations between media, state, and public life. The article proposes seven provisional dimensions for an Africanisation model of media-state relations: change; identities; values; single-party dominance; professionalism; influence; and globalised power. These dimensions are not presented as a fixed continental typology but instead as a comparative heuristic attentive to national variation, historical specificity, and the fluidity of African political and media systems. The model reframes phenomena often described as weak professionalisation, media capture, or democratic deficit as contextually produced forms of adaptation, driven by the postcolonial realities of African civic life. By shifting attention from what African media systems supposedly lack to how they actually function, the arti

The 9th Media Management Summer School on Intercultural Branding, Marketing Communication and International Careers just began at the University of ReinMain in Wiesbaden, Germany.  

Students and faculty from The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), Emerson College (Boston, MA), University of Tampa (Tampa, FL), Mount Saint Mary's University (Los Angeles, CA), Vega School at Emeris (Cape Town, Johannesburg), University of Cape Town (Cape Town), Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore), and Fernfachhochschule Schweiz (FFHS) (Zurich) are in attendance. UCT students Seth Strydom and Pendo Ndayi are there this year, having been selected by Dr. Ron Irwin to participate in the current session. This year our colleagues in Germany came to Cape Town to discuss the programme with interested UCT students. 

The week started with sunshine, great conversations, and our “Sightseeing Walking Tour Wiesbaden” — the perfect way to get to know the city before diving into an intensive week of marketing, communication, creativity, teamwork, and plenty of intercultural exchange.

This year they will be working with industry partner Seibert Group GmbH for an intensive week of brand management internships.

Congratulations PROFESSOR Bosch! 🤩

We are so proud of Centre of Film and Media Studies Professor and SARChi Chair of the Digital Media Sociology Lab, Professor Tanja Bosch for delivering their astounding Inaugural Lecture at UCT last night.

Prof Bosch presented her lecture, 'Calibrated intimacies, apps and decolonial approval' to a packed audience comprised of her colleagues, students, friends, and family. Prof Bosch's work spans decades and includes over 80 journal articles and book chapters, and three monographs, all addressing the role of media in daily life and for social change.

Take a bow Prof, you deserve it!