44 FACULTY OF HUMANITIES ANNUAL REPORT 2021 Africa’s next generation of historians: in 2021, three UJ History post graduate students were awarded permanent history department posts at South African Universities: Northwestern, Unisa and UJ. This year also, we had one PhD and two MAs present their research at International conferences, with many more participating in national and international forums and workshops. Post graduates benefited from two regular, informal reading groups: in the field of Science and Technology Studies; and in the Medical Humanities. One of our post-graduate students (through no merit of ours, but notable nonetheless) was long-listed for the Booker Prize for literature 2021. Special mention is in order for another PG who completed her PhD with us this year. Charmaine Hlongwane joined the department as an extended degree student. She not only went on successfully to complete an Honours and MA with us (the latter with distinction) but – after a brief stint teaching at Wits – was appointed permanently a few years ago as a lecturer in History at NWU. She is currently working on two articles for international journals. The department can boast of three current digital projects. Firstly, the Hansard Digitization project received further Mellon Grant money this year and so continues apace to digitize the entire run of the South African parliamentary debates (see https://ujhistorylab.wordpress.com/digitising-thesa-hansards/). Secondly, UG students in History 1A created an online archive in Omeka (mentioned above, see https://joburg21.omeka.net/), funded through a UJ Teaching Innovation grant and assisted by CAT. A third and very exciting new development in applied digital history research is entitled Aftermaths of Slavery and merits a special and detailed report here. It involves the creation of digital, interactive project. During mid-year, after a good and enthusiastic start, it looked like the whole project would flounder because the publishers of the project leader, Gerald Groenewald’s co-authored book Trials of Slavery (on which the digital project is based) did not want to give permissions for more than a portion of the text. Grant Parker at Stanford came up with an ingenious, immensely generous solution, finding funds to buy up all remaining copies of the book in exchange for full copyright. The outcome of this meant that R100 000 flowed into SA from outside and that 300 copies of Trials were donated to the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum to be given gratis to school groups who visit the museum. In this way, the authors’ greatest desire - that this material would reach the descendants of slaves in the Cape - have been fulfilled. Numerous online meetings (and a formal seminar proposal to a research group at Stanford interested in digital humanities) have ensured funding into late 2022, with a chance of further funding down the line. The project now includes a core group of scholars from UCT, Rice University (Texas) and UC Irvine in addition to UJ and Stanford University. Trials has been digitised and a team of student interns compiled a database based on the information in the book. Project participants are currently working on a way to present this material on a website dedicated to Cape slavery and are planning to run concurrent projects dealing with (1) digitising maps from the early Cape, (2) curating a collection of folk music by descendants of Cape slavery, and (3) developing teaching and outreach materials (possible with the cooperation of Jonathan Jansen at Stellenbosch) in partnership with Iziko Museums in Cape Town. The bulk of the funding at the moment has gone to the renowned photographer and artist, Paul Weinberg, who is developing a series of short documentary films about Cape slavery (linked to cases in the book) as well as a photographic display related to slave heritage sites in the western Cape. Groenewald is hopeful that the project will flourish and will link up with several other projects related to the history of slavery in both the Indian and Atlantic ocean worlds. Other international collaborations have been developing this year, in addition to those continuing: Ballim has participated in the regular writing and reading group convened by Richard Rottenburg consisting of postdoc researchers at Wiser and PhD students based at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Bennet and Barton taught a summer module (virtually) at Shanghai University. The Department of History has managed to raise some good external funding through grants submitted last year. In addition to Incentive funding for Rated Researcher’s received by several staff members, there were funds transferred in February for an NRF grant “Cannabis Histories and Apartheid’s War on Drugs” received late last year (R280k) and a Wellcome Trust grant (of almost R2.9 million) entitled “SA-UK/MH: Medical Humanities co-working between South Africa and the UK”. There are staff developments within the department of history to report for 2021. In August, we were delighted to welcome Mr Lungelo Ndzimande as our new colleague, hired at lecturer level as part of the NGap programme. Ndzimande brings expertise in labour history and rural African economies. During the second semester he co-taught Hons African History with Stephen Sparks, with reports of teaching excellence. Juan Klee had a sabbatical during semester 1 this year and has already translated his time into an accepted journal article, based on work in the Transnet
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