The History Workshop would  like to invite you and representatives of your department to participate in a three-day colloquium on ‘Public History and Archiving Struggle from Below’ from 7-9 June 2019.

The colloquium will reflect on the creation of archives about movements and communities involved in struggles of resistance, their relevance in terms of ongoing struggles, as well as ensuring that the participants in these struggles can record their own stories. Secondly, the colloquium seeks to understand the role of these archives in relation to public history practices. It is in this context that movements and groups involved in struggle are often contesting the boundaries of historical knowledge through their demands to be located in history – from which they have traditionally been marginalised.

By discussing experiences of activism, archival work and public history practices, the colloquium will strive to reimagine archival and public history traditions, methods and practices collaboratively and ‘from below’, and to think about how archives and public history can actively sustain present and future struggles.

Professor Richa Nagar, author of Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India and Muddying the Waters: Co-authoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism, will deliver the keynote address on 7 June.

Other speakers include: Maria Celina Flores (Argentina); Sharif Abdel Kouddous (Egypt), Zephaniah Nkomo (Zimbabwe); Chiara Torcianti (Italy), Luli Callinicos, Andre Odendaal, Ali Khangela Hlongwane, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Koni Benson, Luvuyo Dondolo, Salim Vally, Chrischene Julius and many more.

Please find attached a copy of the draft programme.

Space is limited so please RSVP to Antonette Gouws Antonette.Gouws@wits.ac.za.