An exciting collaboration between two ivy-league institutions will see UCT academics spending a semester abroad next year. The Harvard-UCT Mandela Fellowships are designed to strengthen research relations between the University of Cape Town and Harvard University’s W.E.B Du Bois Research Institute. Dr. Kurt Campbell and Dr. Nomusa Makhubu from the Michaelis School of Fine Art will commence their five-month tenure at the prestigious American university in August 2017. 

Each year, the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute appoints new scholars to conduct research within African and African American Studies. The research institute was founded in 1975 and is located at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard University. The Fellowship programme has a particular (but not exclusive) focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Selection is based on a set of stringent criteria that includes possession of a PhD at the time of applying. In addition, applicants must include in their motivation, a description of the outcomes of their research, how these will contribute towards the development of teaching and learning within South African higher education and how findings will be disseminated beyond the classroom to reach wider audiences. At UCT, preference is given to black South African applicants. The Harvard-UCT Mandela Fellowships are made possible thanks to annual funding received from the AW Mellon Foundation of New York. It is an exciting initiative, one that makes the possibility of international exchange and faster career development accessible to a new generation of UCT academics. All this, whilst strengthening important institutional networks.

Dr. Kurt Campbell Campbell lectures in Fine Art and New Media at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. During his tenure at Harvard, he will exhibit a body of work entitled ‘Muscular Dreams’ about the subversive heritage of boxing in South Africa.

This year, the Fellowship has been awarded to two Michaelis academics. Kurt Campbell and Nomusa Makhubu will take up a semester residency at Harvard, from August to December in 2017. Campbell, who is currently a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and New Media at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, is also an alumnus having obtained both a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) from the University of Cape Town. He obtained a Masters in Fine Art degree from Stellenbosch University where he taught for four years before joining Michaelis in April 2006. Campbell’s recent artworks combine sculpture and Augmented Reality (AR) to facilitate interactive art experiences. During his tenure at Harvard, he will exhibit a body of work entitled ‘Muscular Dreams’ about the subversive heritage of boxing in South Africa. “The project will focus on boxers who exceeded their given social spaces during highly segregated times, including Nelson Mandela and Andrew Jeptha,” says Campbell. On his return from the USA, his intention is to establish a project relating to art as a ‘critical instrument for historical interpretation and affective museum exhibition making’. The fact that the opportunity was awarded to two Michaelis academics this year is no small coincidence according to Campbell. “This signals, in my own mind, the centrality of the visual in the space of the university as an invaluable way of finding routes beyond established boundaries for knowledge production. It also signals a commitment to scholars who are heavily invested in thinking about the post-apartheid space of intellectual movement,” he says.

UCT academic Makhubu is passionate about sharing her love of art. After obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Art, Masters and PhD degrees from Rhodes University, she joined the Michealis School of Fine Art in January of 2014 where she currently lectures in Art History and Visual Culture. She is the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award (2006) and the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy (2014). She is the chairperson of Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI), an ACLS fellow, an Abe Bailey fellow and was a research fellow of the Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation (OYASAF) in Nigeria, Lagos where her doctoral research was based. Makhubu was appointed to the National Arts Festival committee in 2011-2015. She co-edited a Third Text Special Issue: The Art of Change (2013). She was a recipient of the CAA-Getty travel award in 2014. Her current research focuses on African popular culture, photography, performance art and socially engaged art. Her work at Harvard will investigate the phenomenon of art interventionism and social engagement. ‘The project responds to cultural interventions that illuminate changing conceptions of public space, collective action and (artistic) citizenship. There is a lack of literature that focuses on art and interventionism and art in African contexts,’ she says. One of the projects she aims to initiate on her return is a course on art interventionism along with a series of workshops and dialogues targeted at postgraduate students, at the University of Cape Town.

Of the Harvard-UCT Mandela Fellowship, she says that international academic programmes are crucial because they facilitate knowledge exchange. She believes that they provide UCT academics with the opportunity to model best practice and to expand networks across the global academic community. ‘Knowledge is created from exchanging ideas and experiences. International exposure is beneficial for all scholars,’ says Makhubu.