HUMA-Institute for Humanities in Africa

🎉Upcoming: Lecture at Unisa - The University of South Africa by Director Assoc. Prof Divine Fuh on "The Time of the Macabre: Notes on Technology and the Re-Spectularity of Violence"

📆 22 June | 09.30 - 13.00
📍Kgorong Function Hall | Unisa - The University of South Africa Main Campus, Pretoria

RSVP: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=jIuayqM-mUekPlUQOY56Oyjit_gS20pKuURqddeErsVUMEg1TjNaT1MyR1REVjdEUlZERkw5NFNaTy4u&route=shorturl

What does meaningful decolonial reform look like in higher education?

Join Prof. Shose Kessi, Dean of UCT Faculty of Humanities, for a hybrid seminar hosted by Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC) on | The Decolonial Turn at UCT: Resistance and Reform |

This talk will both recount and critically examine my experience of decolonial reform at the University of Cape Town (UCT), focusing on my experience of leadership at UCT first as Chair of the UCT Black Academic Caucus (BAC) and then as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities with multiple tasks of undoing the past, upholding the new, and building a legacy for future generations of scholars. I will discuss how colonial relations of power circulate in the daily realities of staff and students and the complex ways in which they are upheld, resisted, hidden, and reproduced; with particular reference to the circumstances surrounding the calls to decolonize the university emerging from the Rhodes Must Fall student protests in 2015. I conclude with a theory of change framework for higher education institutions.

📅 3 June 2026 | 🕐 13:00 BST
📍 University of Bristol | Online

Register for the seminar here: https://parc.bristol.ac.uk/event/parc-seminar-4-tbc-dr-shose-kessi/

We are pleased to invite you to an interdisciplinary workshop “On Theory” hosted jointly by the Researcher Development Academy (RDA) and HUMA-Institute for Humanities in Africa at University of Cape Town, featuring Professor Saleem Badat – one of South Africa’s most distinguished public intellectuals.

Prof. Badat brings a deeply interdisciplinary perspective to working with theory, given his background in higher education grounded in critical sociology. Prof. Badat is the founding CEO of the Council on Higher Education and a former Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University.

⏰ Wed, 10 June 2026 | 2 pm - 5 pm
Venue: HUMA Seminar Room, Humanities Building, Upper
Campus, UCT Faculty of Humanities

This is a three-hour in-person workshop.
For Postdoctoral Research Fellows, PhD and Master’s students.
🟥 Please RSVP via https://conference.uct.ac.za/event/16918635

Inquiries: [email protected]

💡Upcoming Address

HUMA Director Divine Fuh will deliver the keynote address at the Uppsala Africa Days 2026 Conference. | "From Partnerships to Collaborations: Repairing the Broken Global Ecosystem"

⏰Thursday, 21st May 2026 | 10:30-11:15 CEST

For more information: https://nai.uu.se/africadays

Uppsala University
The Nordic Africa Institute
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
UCT Faculty of Humanities

Congratulations to HUMA-Institute for Humanities in Africa Academic Board Chair Prof. Francis Nyamnjoh, for being elected as a Fellow of The International Core Academy of Sciences and Humanities (CORE Academy) 🎉

Professor Nyamnjoh is part of 23 distinguished scholars added to the prestigious fellowship, which currently includes more than 250 elected Fellows and more than 600 members across more than 60 countries and regions.

His election as a Fellow is a recognition of his distinguished scholarship in African studies and social anthropology, and his significant work on media, mobility, citizenship, identity, belonging, decolonisation, , and the social imagination in Africa.

Read the full announcement: https://coreacad.org/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=256

Don't miss this conversation ⚫ Africa as Theory: The Imperative | L'Afrique comme cadre théorique: L'impératif Decolonial | with Associate Professor Divine Fuh, Guy Marius Sagna, Professor Cheikh Thiam and Dr. Papa Abdoulaye Diop.

April 25th 2026 | Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar,

⏰ 10.00 AM - Free entry
📹 Watch it live (Scan the QR Code)

Open Society Foundations Amherst College Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar UCT Faculty of Humanities

🌟 Pan African Fellowship Programme Seminar Series | Fellow Seminar with Adeyoola Ojemola (Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria) on | in Tunde Kelani's Films

⏰ 15 April - 10AM GMT
🔗 for inquiries and participation: [email protected]

Adeyoola Ojemola is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Mass Communication and works as a lecturer at Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria, where she resides.

She is a Nigerian with keen research interests in film, media, and cultural studies. Her PhD research, titled in Tunde Kelani's Films, focuses on how ecological messages are embedded in African films, particularly Yoruba cultural narratives, and how film audiences receive and connect with these messages. Beyond her doctoral research, her current research interests focus on how environmental literacy and education can be further facilitated through film for environmental sustainability among Nigerian youths.

She is a fellow and recipient of the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) 2025 Small Grant Award, a Junior Research Institute (JRI) Scholar (2025) of LASPAD, Senegal, and a scholar of the Leaders of Africa Institute. She has published in the areas of African cinema and media studies, political communication and youth participation in Nigeria, gender and socio-cultural discourse in film, and media ethics and social responsibility, amongst others.

University of Ibadan African Studies Association of Africa

Upcoming | HUMA Director, Associate Professor Divine Fuh will be delivering a keynote "L'Afrique comme cadre théorique, l'impérative decolonial / Africa as Theory: The Decolonial Imperative at Musée Des Civilisations Noires Officiel

⏰ April 25th | 10.00 AM Dakar

🎥 Watch it live: IDEAS : Institute for Decolonial Engagement and African Studies

🌳 Pan African Fellowship Programme Seminar Series | Fellow Seminar with Linda Makgabutlane (HUMA-Institute for Humanities in Africa) on | Joy in the : Unpacking Black Joy in Contemporary Performance

⏰ 1 April - 10AM GMT
🔗 for inquiries and participation: [email protected]

Linda Makgabutlane is completing her PhD at The University of Cape Town. She is South African, and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA).

Her dissertation project is titled Joy in the Postcolony: Unpacking black Joy in Contemporary South African Performance. She investigates how and can be seen as counterforces to the post-colonial condition of black subjection. Linda’s research interests lie in performance, post- colonial African cities, feminist practices and .

Her academic journey includes an undergraduate degree in architecture and an M.A in Theatre and Performance Making. She is also a U.C.T. Andrew Mellon Foundation, Turning the Tide, Doctoral fellow.

UCT Faculty of Humanities Carnegie Corporation of New York

Don't miss the first Fellow Seminar of the Pan African Fellowship Programme Seminar Series ( ) with Fanidh Sanogo on | Grimaces in

📅 Wednesday 18 March | 🕙 10:00 AM GMT
🔗 for inquiries and participation: [email protected]

Fanidh Sanogo is a Doctoral Fellow in at HUMA, University of Cape Town. Her research explores the intersection of , identity, and urbanity, with a particular focus on the (re)making of contemporary subjectivities.

Building on her acclaimed Master’s research, supported by The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, which investigated the sociality of the maquis in Ouagadougou through the lens of facial , her doctoral work examines how these bodily practices navigate rapid global cultural and technological . Her doctoral research is funded by the prestigious Wadsworth African Fellowship through the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

A versatile scholar, Fanidh’s work spans multiple media; she has published a short film on the contemporary anthropological experience with American Anthropologist and contributed to scholarship on the socio-cultural impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in . She holds a Bachelor of from Glasgow Caledonian University and an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town.

UCT Faculty of Humanities African Studies Association of Africa Carnegie Corporation of New York