Inaugural Lecture: Professor Shahid Vawda

Dear colleagues and students

I write to invite you to the next Vice-Chancellor’s Inaugural Lecture, which will be presented by Professor Shahid Vawda. The lecture is titled “The Provocation of Archie Mafeje”.

Professor Vawda, a respected scholar, currently holds the Archie Mafeje Chair in Critical and Decolonial Humanities as well as the directorship of the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town. Before joining academia, he worked in the trade union movement, at the educational NGO the South African Committee for Higher Education Trust in the 1980s, and as a consultant researcher for the post-1994 local, provincial and national governments in the areas of land reform, housing, informal settlements, forestry re-structuring and heritage.

Professor Vawda graduated with a BA degree from the University of Durban – Westville (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal.) He then obtained his master’s at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and was awarded his PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

His academic teaching and research has been carried out at various universities in South Africa, in other African countries and abroad. He has participated in several United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and International Council of Museums research workshops related to culture, heritage and diversity.

The lecture will focus on Professor Archibald Monwabisi Mafeje – the thought provoker. Mafeje’s commitment to open, progressive, decolonial Afrocentric scholarship challenges ready-made solutions to the development agenda and unresolved issues of inequality and injustice on the African continent. The intellectual work and incomplete and unfinished developmental research he provoked suggests a re-evaluation of his work within a new recentred African research agenda.

Please join Professor Vawda as he presents his inaugural lecture.

When: Wednesday, 8 August 2018

Where: Lecture Theatre 2, Kramer Law Building, Middle Campus, University of Cape Town

Time: 17:30 (doors open at 17:00)

RSVP: Please confirm your attendance online by Monday, 6 August 2018.

For further information, please email or phone 021 650 4847.

Sincerely

Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng
Vice-Chancellor

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