Faculty of Humanities at Nelson Mandela University

24/10/2026

New book explores the lasting impact of South Africa’s unresolved land claims

The Department of History and Political Studies recently hosted the launch of Angela Mias’ book, Are We Not Worthy – Yet the Soil Remembers.

The work chronicles her family’s century-long struggle to reclaim their ancestral land and raises broader questions about justice, belonging, and democratic trust.

Drawing on years of archival research, Mias traces her family’s history of land dispossession and its protracted journey through South Africa’s land restitution process.

What began in 1994 as a search for her family’s history developed into an investigation of the historical records, institutional delays, and personal consequences surrounding their claim, submitted in 1996.

“I was looking for the place of my family in the history of this country,” Mias told the audience at the launch, held in the Council Chambers on the University’s South Campus.

Her account highlights how land represents more than property or economic value. It is also tied to ancestry, identity, heritage, and the connection between generations. Mias reflected on how decades of waiting have affected her family, with uncertainty and disagreements deepening existing divisions.

Read more here: https://news.mandela.ac.za/News/New-book-explores-the-lasting-impact-of-South-Afri

22/10/2026

Mandela University helps shape the future of Digital Humanities in South Africa

Nelson Mandela University joined universities, researchers and other stakeholders from across South Africa and the continent to help shape the future of Digital Humanities at a national summit held in Pretoria from 7 to 9 October 2026.

The inaugural Digital Humanities (DH) Cluster Summit, hosted at the University of South Africa (UNISA), brought together representatives from at least 20 institutions to define the field, strengthen collaboration and establish shared priorities for its advancement in higher education and research.

Convened jointly by Mandela University, through its Digital Humanities Hub, North-West University, UNISA and the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), the summit is expected to lay the groundwork for a South African Digital Humanities position paper, scheduled for completion later this year.

Dr Johannes Sibeko, coordinator of Nelson Mandela University’s Digital Humanities Hub, led the University’s team at the summit.

“The summit provided an important opportunity for institutions to consider how Digital Humanities can develop in ways that respond to South Africa’s intellectual, cultural and linguistic contexts,” said Dr Sibeko.

“For Nelson Mandela University, these discussions are particularly relevant as we continue to develop our Digital Humanities curriculum and strengthen interdisciplinary research that draws on digital methods to address questions meaningful to our society.”

Read more here: https://news.mandela.ac.za/News/Mandela-University-helps-shape-the-future-of-Digit

20/10/2026

Are We Not Worthy – Yet the soil remembers

🗓21 October 2026
🕐11H:00 – 13H:00
📍Council Chambers, South Campus

15/10/2026

Prof Pumla Gqola’s SARChI Chair in African Feminist Imagination renewed and upgraded -

Reasons to be Proud - Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola’s South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University has been renewed and upgraded from Tier 2, to Tier 1, which substantially extends the Chair’s duration and future.

Another achievement includes her receiving a National Research Foundation (NRF) B1 rating in 2026, meaning “a researcher enjoys considerable international recognition from peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs”, according to the NRF website.

The SARChI is a strategic government programme established by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation and managed by the NRF to attract and retain research excellence in public universities.

The Chair, which is based at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies, focuses on two areas: creative work and gendered violence.

The upgrading of the Chair is a key milestone for a SARChI Chair. In the SARChI framework, upgrading from Tier 2 to Tier 1 signifies moving from a well-established researcher to a world-class, internationally recognised leader in the field.

It indicates a proven track record of sustaining high-impact research, global excellence, and successful postgraduate mentoring.

Prof Gqola recently explained in the University’s Women’s Month video series, that the Chair “works across the creative arts to investigate the working of the feminist imagination” by “taking seriously the creative genres… (It is) “concerned with the ways in which the works of the imagination are more than simply either mirrors or reflections of society but offer us ways of thinking about new ways of freedom, new ways of being, new ways of being human on the planet.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSnLlIFSnxU

Read the full story here: https://news.mandela.ac.za/News/Prof-Pumla-Gqola%E2%80%99s-SARChI-Chair-in-African-Feminis

15/10/2026

14/10/2026

The NRF SARChI in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA) invite you to attend the upcoming Games and Play Seminar "What's in a game of cards?" by Harsheila Riga

🕐 14h30 - 15h30
🗓 16 October 2026
📍Zoom (scan invite)

Today the audience will be introduced to a card game called Thunee. It is estimated that the card game was developed in the 1860’s when the Indians arrived from the sub-continent to work as indentured labourers on the sugarcane fields north of Durban. These labourers were displaced from their families and communities and were transported to an entirely different continent where they worked as slaves for the colonial regime of the time. It is believed that playing Thunee was one of the ways in which they tried to pass time, and this in turn created a sense of cohesion and camaraderie amongst them.

Fast forward to the 21st century, Thunee is still played mostly by South African Indians. In this presentation we will explore the history of this game and dive into how it’s played. Let’s have some fun!

06/10/2026

Join us for "Original Apartheid Hustler: The Fiction and Fabrications of Dugmore Boetie". This event invites us to reflect on the intersections of literature, history, race, identity, and the legacies of apartheid.

📅 Date: 8 October 2026
⏰ Time: 13:00–14:30
📍 Venue: Council Chambers, South Campus, Nelson Mandela University

📩 RSVP: [email protected]

01/10/2026

The NRF SARChI in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA) invite you to attend the upcoming Games and Play Seminar "Learning to Play: Building expertise for unfamiliar problems" by Corey Schimpf and Brian Castellani

📆 02 October 2026
🕐 14h30 - 15h30
📍Zoom (scan QR code)

This presentation explores the value of games and play for developing adaptive expertise: the capacity to use existing knowledge and skills flexibly and respond creatively to unfamiliar and complex challenges. Drawing on our backgrounds in engineering education and complexity-informed creative practice, we consider how experimentation, speculative design, and imagination can support this kind of learning and professional development.

We focus on just transitions in urban environments, where technical, social, environmental and community concerns are entangled and no single form of expertise is sufficient. In such settings, even experienced practitioners can find themselves operating as novices because the particular configuration of the problem is new.

We will play an actual game to demonstrate how structured forms of play can create relatively low-risk spaces in which people can experiment, engage in uncommon, difficult, or risky agentic opportunities or practices, fail, revise, and try again, explore different possibilities, experience the consequences of interventions at an accelerated pace, encounter alternative perspectives and develop adaptive expertise. Their value lies not simply in making learning more engaging, but in helping people learn how to act when there is no established solution or procedure for solution convergence.

28/09/2026

We’re proud to see our own, Tarryn Rennie, sharing her beautiful work titled 'You Are Loved' with young readers at Woodridge College & Prep as part of their Literacy Celebrations.

A wonderful example of how creativity, visual storytelling and research can come together to inspire and enrich lives. 💛🎨

28/09/2026

In response to the national crisis of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), second-year Public Relations students hosted the Judo for Her Safety campaign to equip young women with practical self-defence skills.

The initiative was inspired by the need to move beyond conversations about GBVF towards practical action by equipping women and communities with skills that can strengthen their ability to respond to the issue.

The campaign partnered with Love Sport Africa, an NGO that uses sport, education, leadership and mentorship to empower youth and under-resourced communities. The collaboration brought together the Mandela University students’ community engagement efforts and the organisation’s focus on sport and gender empowerment.

Love Sport Africa’s rugby players, known as the “Jaguars”, travelled from different townships across Gqeberha to participate in the campaign.

Reflecting on the initiative, Love Sport Africa founder, Athi Mayinje said the event came at a significant time for women affected by the ongoing reality of GBV in the country.

“Those who attended really wanted to learn ways and techniques in which they could protect themselves. They were taught techniques and were able to practise and execute them within the workshop, which showed the attentiveness of the audience,” he said.

Read more here: https://news.mandela.ac.za/News/-Taking-a-stand-against-GBVF-through-Judo-for-Her