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March - May 2023
Wits History Workshop Seminar Schedule March- May 2023 Time: 13h00-14h15*
Date Speaker and Affiliation Title 1 March Daria Zelenova Senior Research Fellow, Institute of African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences and ODID, Oxford/Sussex Military training of MK and ZAPU soldiers in the USSR in the 1960s: unpacking cultural exchanges of internationalism 8 March Noor Nieftagodien Military training of MK and ZAPU soldiers in the USSR in the 1960s: unpacking cultural exchanges 8 March Noor Nieftagodien (University of the Witwatersrand), Tshepo Moloi (University of Johannesburg), and Laurence Stewart (University of the Witwatersrand) Book Launch: Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919-1949 New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) 15 March Béatrice Touchelay Professor of Contemporary History, University of Lille What do statistics mean in a colonial and postcolonial situation (Anglophone and Francophone Africa, 19th-20th centuries)? 22 March Zachary Levenson (UNC-Greensboro & Univ. of Johannesburg) and Marcel Paret (Univ. of Utah & Univ. of Johannesburg) The South African tradition of racial capitalism 29 March Liz Carmichael Emeritus Research Fellow, St John’s College, Oxford The unknown story of the transition: the National Peace Accord and the Peace Committees, a social compact that worked, 1991 to 1994 5 April Justin Pearce Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Stellenbosch University Nationalism and internationalism in Angola’s Cold War army 19 April Andrew Flinn (University College London) and Hannah Ishmael (Archivist, Black Cultural Archives, London) Digging where we stand: the drive and motivations to establish independent radical archives 26 April Marc Epprecht Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Canada & University of the Witwatersrand The Berg, the Basotho and politics in the writing of Robert Keable, 1912-1924: a decolonization diary 3 May Simon Bright ZimMedia & PhD Researcher, Univ. of the West of England The untold story of transnational southern African cinema, 1977-2003 10 May Nikolaos Papadogiannis Lecturer in European History, University of Stirling Transnational AIDS Activism in Western Europe, 1980s-1990s 17 May Stefan Norgaard PhD Candidate in Urban Planning, Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning The Graft of Racial Modernism: Pastiche, Hegemony, and Urban Planning in the Bophuthatswana Bantustan 24 May Lloyd Hazvineyi PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand Ndebele forced removals and temporalities of migration in colonial Zimbabwe 31 May Cynthia Kros (University of the Witwatersrand), Reece Auguiste (University of Colorado, Boulder) & Pervaiz Khan (University of the Witwatersrand) Book Launch: Reframing Africa? Reflections on Modernity and the Moving Image *Depending on speaker time zone, time may vary. Download the list here
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July - October 2023
Date
Speaker and Affiliation
Title
26 July
Luke Sinwell (University of Johannesburg)) and Ayanda Mabulu (University of Johannesburg)
God is Gangstah: Black Art and the Origins of The Number in the former Ciskei (1886-Present)
2 August
Tinashe Mushakavanhu
Junior Research Fellow, African & Comparative Literature, University of Oxford.
Voices of Liberation: Ndabaningi Sithole: A forgotten Founding Father
16 August
Kasonde Mokonde
PhD Candidate, History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand
‘Theatre of the Dispossessed’ and State Repression in South African History, 1980 - 1985
23 August
Vusi Khumalo
Senior Lecturer, History, Nelson Mandela University
Wilberforce Academy Book Launch: South Africa’s Struggle for Independent Education
30 August
Siphokazi Magadla
Associate Professor, Political and International Studies, Rhodes University
Book presentation: Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa.
13 September
Tomas Penfold
Associate Lecturer, African History, University College London
Reading Emotion in South Africa’s Literary Non-Scenes
20 September
Kana Kondo
PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University
A Place of Remembrance in South Africa’s Post-Memory Boom: Depicting the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum from Everyday Life in Soweto
27 September
Benjamin Lawrence (University of Arizona) and Vusumuzi Kumalo (Nelson Mandela University)
Decolonizing Duggie: Restoring Dugmore Boetie to His Rightful Place in South African National Literary Heritage
4 October
Mathieu Fulla (Center for History at Sciences Po) and Michele di Donato (University of Pisa) (editors), with Arianna Lissoni (University of the Witwatersrand) (contributor)
Book presentation: Leftist Internationalisms: A Transnational Political History,
11 October
Nikolaos Papadogianni
Lecturer in European History, University of Stirling
Migration from Greece to West Germany and Sexual Transformation in both Countries in the 1960s – 1980s
18 October
Bridget Kenny
Professor in Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand
Coercive Technologies: Lifts, labour and affective space in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 20th century
Time: 13h00-14h15 (Depending on speaker time zone, time may vary)
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2021
- Dr Laura Efron, Postdoc fellow at University of Buenos Aires - CONICE, Southern experiences in dialogue: A study case on South Atlantic Knowledge Production
- Dr Emily Bridger, Senior Lecturer, Global and Imperial History, University of Exeter - Young Women against Apartheid: Gender, Youth and South Africa's Liberation
- Kaitlin Gibson, Alina Dixon and Allison GoebelSchool of Environmental Studies, Queens University - Love, Sex, and Exchange in the Context of Peacebuilding in the DRC
- Dr Ali Hlongwane, Researcher, History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand - Lion of Azania: A biography of Zephania Lekoame Mothopeng (1913-1990)
- Dr Franziska Rueedi, Senior Researcher and Lecturer, Department of History, University of Zürich - The Vaal Uprising of 1984 & the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa
- Dr Rob Skinner, Lecturer, Modern History, Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristo - A great drama in the history of human development: the ‘ecological perspective’ of British anti-colonial and anti-apartheid activism in the 1950s
- Dr Vusumuzi Kumalo (Senior Lecturer in History, Nelson Mandela University) and Prof Benjamin Lawrance(Professor of History, University of Arizona) - Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost
- Patrick Mangashe, PhD Candidate, History Department, University of Fort Hare - The Armed Struggle, Mass Mobilisation and the Internal Underground, 1983-1990
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2019
- Eddie Webster, SWOP/History Workshop – Audiences, Intellectuals and Histories revisited: A comparison across generations
- Billy Keniston, University of Illinois, USA – Between Rationality & Violence: Resistance & Repression, 1964-1984
- Amanda Joyce Hall, Yale University, USA – A World Against Apartheid within the World newspaper: Concepts of the International Solidarity Movement in the Black Press, 1971 – 1976
- Laura Phillips, York University, USA – From Bantustans to BEE: Accumulation in Limpopo, 1970 - 2010
- Toivo Asheeke, USA – Armed Exiles: Black Consciousness, Guerrilla Struggle, and Armed Self-Defense, 1973-1990
- William Blakemore Lyon, Humboldt University, Berlin – West African labor in early Namibian Colonial History, 1894-1925
- Tara Weinberg, History Workshop – Making Collective Property: Land-buying Syndicates and the Native Farmers Association of South Africa in early 20th century Transvaal
- Thuto Thipe, Yale University, USA – Photographing Everyday Alexandra, 1930s-1970s
- Rob Skinner, University of Bristol, UK – 'Fruit of Protest': International boycotts, global history and the Politics of the Everyday
- Emily Bridger, University of Exeter – Contesting Gender and Creating a Movement: Gender relations, sexuality, and control within South Africa’s student struggle, c. 1980s
- Allen Isaacman, University of Minnesota, USA – Toward a Biography of Samora Machel”
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2018
- Dr Arianna Lissoni, History Workshop – Yusuf Dadoo, India and South Africa’s liberation Struggle
- Duduzile Ndlovu, African Studies for Migration Studies – Creative thesis writing: combining poetry with academic prose to enhance the writer’s voice and increase access to the text
- Yolisa Mfaise, AGRI SA – The long road from dispossessions to redress: How far are we with achieving redress, secure tenure and access to land on an equitable basis, 24 years past the dawn of democracy?
- Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth, CISA – Boneless Children: Law, Livelihood and Transnational Lives in Indian Circus
- Matthieu Rey, IREMAM & IFAS-Research – Drawing a line in the sand? Another (his)story of the Borders
- Dr Koni Benson, UWC, Department of History – Feminist Collaborative Praxis in Producing Histories of Struggle in Cape Town
- Johannes Machinya, SOSS & History Workshop – “Know[ing] how to speak to them [state officials]”: a rethinking of bribes in undocumented migrants’engagement with state officials
- Prof Hanan Sabea, American University in Cairo, Egypt – the Flashes of Revolutionary Times: the University as a Meshwork of Hope, Despair and Endurance
- Dr Nomkhosi Xulu-Gama, Chris Hani Institute – Hostels in History
- Joseph Kachim, University of the Free State – Changing Immigrant Status: Power Shift, Settler Exclusion and Ethnic Mobilization, 1957 – 1981
- Mxolisi Dlamuka, UWC, History Department – Harry Gwala, Political Militancy and State Trials, 1960-1977
- Damon Heatlie, WSoA, Film & Television – Writing the Indian Gangster
- Dr Thina Nzo, History Workshop – Organogram Politics: Building State Capacity in Neopatrimonial Local Government Bureaucracy in South Africa
- Dr Antonio Pezzano, University of Naples, "L'Orientale" – The Modes of Governance in Informal Trading Policy in the Inner City of Johannesburg
- Dr Sibongiseni Mkhize, CEO of the South African State Theatre – Selby Msimang, AWG Champion and the ANC in Natal, 1945 – 1952
- Prof Mucha Musemwa, Department of History, Wits – Zimbabwe’s drift towards authoritarianism and its environmental consequences, 2000-2017
- George Njung, Department of History, Wits – Victims of Empire: WWI Ex-servicemen and the Colonial Economy of Wartime Sacrifices in British Nigeria, 1914-1939
- Dr Nqobile Zulu, University of Johannesburg – Politics of Disruption: violence as a strategy for Social Justice in Zimbabwe
- Sibanengi Ncube, UFS, International Studies Group – ‘By the Will of the People’ or Down the Barrel of the Gun? The Fall of Mugabe and the Rise of Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe
- Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo, UJ, Department of Politics & IR – 'Diplomacy of National Liberation’ The exiled PAC and the International Community, 1962-1990
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2017
- Dr Faeeza Ballim, History Workshop – From paternalism to "freedom": Labour relations in the small town of Lephalale
- Prof Cristiana Fiamingo, University of Milan – Comparing Italian and South African education policies: a hypothesis of research on global education in the “end-of-work” era
- Annina Clavadetscher, University o fBern, Switzerland – Arbeitsgruppesüdliches Afrika: How a small Swiss working group supported the South African apartheid regime
- Nicole Beardsworth, University of Warwick – The ‘Coalition Conundrum’: What lessons do Uganda and Zambia hold for Zimbabwe’s opposition ahead of the 2018 elections?
- Dr Thina Nzo, History Workshop–Service Delivery or Nelson Mandela Monument: The Dilemma of Councillor Representation
- Jonathan R. Freeman, Fullbright Scholar – Sun City, A Site of Global Cultural Exchange during the Anti-Apartheid Movement
- Prof Gillian Hart: University of California, Berkeley and Dr Nomkhosi Xulu‐Gama: Durban University of Technology – Researching everyday life: Space, Place & Power
- Duncan Money, University of the Free State – Underground Struggles: The early life of Jack Hodgson
- Prof Cynthia Kros, History Workshop – Doing Oral History in my own Backyard: Writing a centenary history for the Parkview Schools
- Dr Ana Stevenson, University of the Free State – ”Lady Emancipators”: The Woman‐Slave Analogy and Nineteenth‐Century Social Reform in the United States
- Dr Franziska Rueedi, History Workshop – ‘And then we heard that the Theleweni are going to attack’: Rumour, affect, and the production of violent subjectivities in the Natal Midlands
- Dr Beth Vale, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) –Intangible Infrastructure in Johannesburg Nightclubs
- Naadira Munshi, Sociology Department – Platinum Politics: The Rise, and rise,of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU)
- Sasha Rai, History Department – Crossing Borders, Present Futures: A study of the Life Histories of Pakistani Immigrants in Durban
- Christa Kuljian, WISER – How has the Social and Political Context Shaped the History of the Search for Human Origins in South Africa?
- Laura Phillips – Business in the Bantustans: Lebowa and the Making of an 'Entrepreneurial Class'
- Linell Chewins, History Department – The Exclusive Ivory Commercial Company of Inhambane and Louren?o Marques: Re‐evaluating slavery out of Delagoa Bay during the early 19th century
- Brad Safarik, Bordeaux, France – Rural social organizing under authoritarian governance: Making spaces in Angola and Brazil
- Robyn Bloch, WISER – The Seven Eyed Spy: Apartheid agent Olivia Forsyth’s exculpation in five moves
- Edgar Taylor, CISA – Work and Waste in the Archive
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2016
- Thembani Dube - The Native Land Husbandry Act (Magandiya) and the promotion of Kalanga ethnicity, 1950-1963: Challenge to agraruan policies by two African chiefs.
- The Accidental Tourists: Planning for the 1981 Springbok Tour to the United States
- Julia Plessing - Citizens or subjects? Repertoires of participation in a semi-rural community in Mpumalanga, South Africa
- Dineo Skosana - The South African Mineral Law: A State-led Privatisation
- Dillip Menon - A Prehistory of Violence? Revolution and Martyrs in the Making of a Political Tradition in Kerala
- Barbara Heer - Property ownership, privilege and social distinction – Disjunctive comparison of property owners across township, suburb boundaries in Johannesburg
- Cynthia Kros - Still scaling the walls of the ivory tower after all these years: Entering into a conversation about People’s History – then and now
- Shireen Hassim - Nationalism, feminism and autonomy: The ANC in exile and the question of women
- Sifiso Ndlovu - Brief History of the African Students Association
- Simamkele Dlakavu - Asijiki: Black Women in the Economic Freedom Fighters, Owning Space, Building a Movement
- Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu - Black youth and students in exile: the revival of the liberation movement(s) in the 1970s
- Edgar Taylor - Surveillance, Anonymity, and Disciplinary Violence in the Buganda Anti-Asian Boycott of 1959/1960
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2015
- Sam North (Hull) - ‘Museums, slavery and heritage installations in Simon’s Town: remembering a forgotten past’
- Nqobile Zulu - Contemporary game farming: a colonial present?
- George Gona (Nairobi) - Kenya’s Underground Movement of the 1970s and 1980s: Interrogating the Efficacy of its Recruitment Strategi
- Anne Heffernan - Comrades in Classrooms: the role of COSAS in anti-apartheid mobilization, 1979-1985
- Joel Pearson (PARI) - Managing Witchcraft in the Early Twentieth Century Transvaal
- Sekiba Lekgoathi - “Lapho sikhona kunokukhanya”: Ikwekwezi FM, ‘Southern Ndebele’ Identity, Language and Democracy in Post-apartheid South Africa
- Alia Mossallam (Cairo) - The History Workshops in Egypt - In search of a new language for histories, hopes and despairs
- Peter Linebagh (Distinguished Visiting Professor, Rhodes University) - The Origin of the "Special Relationship
- Laura Phillips (University of New York) - The 'Transkeian-ization' of the Transkei: 'Nationalism and the Making of an Elite through the Transkei Development Corporation, 1963 - 1984
- Federica Duca (PARI) - Opening private walls: insights into a new understanding of elite retreat as belonging
- Anna Voegeli (University of Basel) - Exploring topographies of the everyday in the Shiluvane area, north-eastern Transvaal, in the 1940s
- Emily Bridger (Exeter) - South Africa’s Female Comrades: Gender, Student Politics and Collective Violence in Soweto, 1984-1989
- Julian Brown - Crisis Subjectivities and Everyday Life: Post Apartheid Protest Politics
- Hugh McMillan - Historians and Exile
- Elizabeth Williams (Goldsmiths, University of London) - Book Launch - We can never be free in Brent (London) until South Africa is free..." : Black British solidarity and the struggle for democracy in South Africa
- Julia Tischler (Humboldt University of Berlin) - South Africa’s agrarian transition – progressivism and agricultural education in the Transkei and Ciskei, c. 1900-1945
- William Chafe (Duke University) - The More Things Change, The More They Remain the Same: Race in America
- Barry Gilder (MISTRA) - Inside History: South Africa from Revolution to Reconstruction
- Allen Isaacman (University of Minnesota) - Samora Machel: His Life and Ideology
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2014
- Anne Heffernan - 'The ANC Youth League Reconstituted and Resurgent'
- Elizabeth Hull, SOAS University of London - Rushing nowhere quickly: Nurses' experiences of transition in rural KwaZulu-Natal
- Linel Chewins - Trade Relationships in Delagoa Bay, 1721 - 1730
- Christa Kulijan - Sanctuary: Looking at the History of Johannesburg through the Lens of One Church
- Clive Glaser - Champions of the poor or militant fighters for a better pay cheque? Teacher unionism in Mexico and South Africa, 1979-2013
- Duncan Money - ‘The eyes of the world are on the Copperbelt tonight’: The world of European labour on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1940-46
- Natasha Erlank, Historical Studies, University of Johannesburg - Emplaced Histories of South Africa: The Example of Sophiatown
- George Gona - On Writing Zarina Patel: the Indomitable Spirit
- Arianna Lissoni - 'New sources, old story? debating South Africa's struggle history today'
- Ian McQueen - Remembering South Africa's 1970s: Friends, Discussions, Moments
- Shireen Ally - Material Remains: Artifice versus Artefact in the Archive of Bantustan Rule
- Sibongiseni Mkhize - Umfelandawonye, Umendo Wenkululeko[1]: Selby Msimang’s vision of African economic emancipation, 1930s to 1950s
- Emma Monama (PARI)
- Arianna Lissoni - ‘ “Dear Comrade Chief Rep”: Love, Marriage, and the family in the ANC in Exile in Tanzania’
- Prof W Chafe - "The Gods Bring Threads to Webs Begun:" How the Era of Jim Crow in the United States Created the Foundation for the Civil rights Movement of the 1960a."
- Wiliam Beinart and Karen Brown- "Disease lies in the spoor of women": supernatural and gendered explanations of disease causation in contemporary South Africa?
- Sarah Godsell and Anna Voegeli, (University of Basel) - Reflecting on the role of bantustans in the South African Empire
- David Thelen - Rethinking Oral History and Creating Community in Sophiatown
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2013
- Idah Makukule (PARI) - Zandspruit/Free State connections; Migrancy and new communities
- Thulisile Mphambukeli (PARI and UFS) - 'Citizenship, housing and emerging communities in Mangaung'
- Dr Thula Simpson (University of Pretoria) - The Historical Literature on the ANC’s Armed Struggle: Key Texts, Recent Research and Ongoing Controversies
- Nisha Mathew - Pearls, Pirates and Politics: Reclaiming Dubai as Part of Indian Ocean World Histories
- Franziska Rueedi - Political subjectivity and the rebellious momentum: the shaping of popular protests in the Vaal Triangle, South Africa, 1980-1984
- Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi (COUNCIL ON HIGHER EDUCATION) - “ ‘Izingoma zo Mzabalazo Esiqithini!’ Role of Songs in the African Liberation Struggle of South Africa, 1960-1991. A Culture History of Robben Island.”
- Ivor Chipkin (PARI) - 'Defamiliarising South Africa: Photographs of Social Change'
- Stanley Malindi - The impact of platinum mining on traditional communities: A Bapo-Ba-Mogale case study (MA Proposal)
- Idah Makukule in conversation with Ivor Chipkin (PARI) - Coming to grips with the waiting room: social change and institutions in Zandspruit
- Wongo Bottoman - The Making of an MK Cadre
- Sibongiseni Mkhize - ‘I always hoped that the Liberal Party would find common ground with the ANC’: Selby Msimang and the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953 to 1968
- Danai Mupotsa - Against Love? Intimate Attachment as Aporetic Dispossession
- Federica Duca (Public Affairs Research Institute) - New and old forms of suburbs
- Liezemarie Johannes - Understanding Political Values: the Case of Welkom
- Wayne Dooling (SOAS, University of London) - Poverty and Respectability in 1930s Cape Town
- Sayaka Kono (PhD Candidate, Graduate School of International and Cultural Studies,Tsuda College, Tokyo, Japan) - A "nation-building" under "Bantustan" policy?: A case study of "Solidarity as Basotho"
- Bob Edgar - Josie Mpama: A Life
- Nqobile Zulu - Is there a game farming culture or culture of game?
- Vusi Kumalo - Education and Land as a fundamental to Ethiopianism appeal: The making of Evaton as an autonomous settlement 1905 to 1918
- Shireen Ally and Eric Worby - The Disappointment of Nostalgia: Conceptualising Cultures of Memory in Contemporary South Africa
- Helen Ludlow - Reflections on a 19th Century Local History - Colesberg, Cape Colony, and the shaping of government schooling
- Tshepo Moloi - The Botswana connection: MK, Saboteurs and the eruption of militant opposition in Thembisa Township, 1979 to the mid-1980s
- Carolien Greyling - The emergence and Development of Ultra Conservatives in Ermelo. 1960-1994
- Hannah Dawson - Youth politics: waiting and envy in a South African informal settlement
- Liezemarie Johannes - Rethinking the Local: Lessons from Gated Communities
- Philip Bonner - The mid – twentieth century South African Riot. The View from The Rand
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2012
- Stanley Malindi - What Light can the workings of Traditional Courts in and around Gopane throw on the role of Traditional Courts in a modern democratic South Africa?
- Tshepo Moloi - From Gang Warfare to Political Violence, Maokeng Township, from mid-1980s to 1992
- Tiffany Ebrahim - Young Mothers in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga
- Prinish Badassy - “Secrecy was the essence of the crime!”1 Newspaper and Public Discourses of Infanticide, Natal, 1860-1910
- Andrea Johnson - Who is the Public Official at Beit Bridge border post, Musina
- Ian McQueen - ‘Liberal Failure or Radical Moment? The Spro-cas Projectsand Opposition to Apartheid in the 1970s’
- Andrew McDonald - The Dan?arinas of Louren?o Marques and Beira:Merry-making, Women Travellers and South Africa's Eastern Border,1920s-1940s
- Thembeka Mufamadi - The creation of the Programme to Combat Racism, 1968-1969, by the World Council of Churches, in its fight against apartheid
- Vusi Kumalo - The making of Evaton community : Origins, development and the dynamics of Evaton community 1905-1939
- Sifiso Ndlovu - National identity and ethnic identity in post-apartheid South Africa: A case study of former KwaNdebele in the rainbow nation
- Noor Nieftagodien - Vaal squatters in the 1940s: occupiers, speculators and eye of the city
- Danai Mupotsa - Plays, Pageants and Weddings: Staged Afro-Modernities in Early 20th Century South Africa
- Nqobile Zulu - The perfomativity of community in environmental conservation and ecotourism
- Stephen Volz (Kenyon College) - African Teachers on the Colonial Frontier: Tswana Evangelists and Their Communities During the Nineteenth Century
- Franziska Rueedi (Oxford) - Patterns of violence in the Vaal Triangle, 1984 - 1986
- Nancy Andrew (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) -Farm dwellers caught in the claws of expanding commercial wildlife production: land concentration and the social impact of large private game reserves in the Eastern Cape
- Sarah Godsell - Personal investment and state policy: The Haphazard foundations of Bophuthatwana in Hammanskraal 1948-1960
- Micah Reddy - Sapping the Walls - Tsawan Mine workers and the struggle against Mangope in the early 1990s
- Stacey Sommerdyk - From Slavery to “Engagé” Labour: Purchasing Unfree Labourers on the Loango Coast, 1749-1862"
- Michelle Hay - The Challenges of Land Transfer Under The 1936 Natives Trust and Land Act
- Julian Brown - What do we talk about when we talk about 'the local'?
- Philip Bonner - The Black Elite