45 archive in central Johannesburg. The department successfully motivated for GES for a new PDRF and in September welcomed Dr Sarah Delius, a West Africanist historian with work on slavery and gender in Sierra Leone. In January this year, our departmental administrator experienced the joys of having a baby, and was thus on maternity leave for the first half of 2021. Her post was ably occupied by an acting administrator and with the notable assistance of Ms Barbara Leeuwner and Ms Zaynab Meer. On the sad side of this picture, we faced the resignation of our SL colleague Dr Khumisho Moguerane at the end of July 2021. History sponsored three public events for the Faculty of Humanities. Two were organised by Natasha Erlank: An outstanding Helen Joseph Lecture by Dr Tlaleng Mafokeng was entitled “Undressing Freedom: Force, Impunity and Hubris as a Response to Disaster” focused on gender and violence; and a multi-university panel series celebrating 100 years of the South African Communist Party. A Humanities Distinguished 4IR Lecture was organised/chaired by Stephen Sparks, and it featured Faeeza Ballim, with the VC Prof Marwala as discussant. History also hosted a VC’s Reading Groups, with Sparks as discussant for a classic history of the French Revolution. Other examples of academic citizenship include continuing work, this year, as journal editors (half of us edit journals) and editorial board members. Most of us are active reviewers (for articles, books, NRF ratings, and applications for granted projects in our fields, NRF ratings. These tasks fall outside of the faculty’s recognized KPIs but nonetheless a) take immense amounts of time and b) demonstrate the depth of expertise in the department and recognition. Some other mentionables: Our library representative is this year was (again) responsible for ordering over R1.5 million in history books for the library (an enormous proportion of total faculty budget!); our department provided two successful applicants to work with the Library as the Gale Ambassador; we had four workshops with QA in preparation for a Coursework MA and review of Honours. Academic staff took charge of fresh efforts for publicity: one of us developed our departmental website, another designed a wordpress site to feature our “UJ HistoryLab”; another created a departmental Youtube channel featuring recorded online seminars; another enlivened our Facebook page by introducing each of our postgraduate students in individual “profiles”. A new online seminar series was developed for post-graduates and senior undergraduates (“Journeys in History”, focused on research methods). Academic staff organised a workshop to assist prospective PG students with their NRF funding applications, and provided oneon-one coaching for this as well. Looking Ahead In 2022, the department welcomes a new HoD, Dr Faeeza Ballim, who brings a unique range of experiences and expertise to this position, including her service as DHDC and the 2021 FHDC representative. We anticipate a productive set of years under her excellent leadership. Four staff members are currently completing three book manuscripts for publication in 2022: Faeeza Ballim: Apartheid’s Leviathan: A History of Technological Ambivalence (Ohio U Press); Natasha Erlank: Convening Black Intimacy in Early Twentieth Century South Africa (Ohio U Press); Brett Bennet and Greg Barton: Saving the World the First Time: Ideas of Climate Change Before Global Warming (Reaktion Press). Faeeza Ballim is co-editing a book series on Science and Technology Studies in Africa called Translating Technologies, consisting of five volumes (Brill Press, 2022 and 2023). Nafisa Essop Sheik has successfully applied to be a writing fellow for a term at JIAS during the first semester 2022, to complete her book manuscript for Manchester University Press. Stephen Sparks and Thembisa Waetjen are also working on respective book manuscripts. In terms of staff development, we anticipate the hire a new colleague in the first half of 2022, specializing in African and South African history and oral history methods. We welcome this also as, from next year, we will be developing courses and exchanges within Apartheid studies/ comparative racism and colonialism. These will be in collaboration with academic partners at Birzeit University in Palestine, University of Illinois USA, among others. We are developing post-graduate research workshop collaborations (in April and August 2022) with Makerere University, Uganda, and continue to nurture academic collaborations with colleagues based in Accra, Masvingo and Lagos, as well as around South Africa. We will continue with several ongoing collaborative projects, including Governing Intimacies, Medical humanities, and Environmental history. The “Trials of Slavery” digital project has received funding for a series of seminars/ workshops next year where digital humanities projects will present their work and best practices,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjU1NDYx