Visiting Scholar at Harvard University

In the Center of Knowledge: Widener Library in Harvard Yard

This fall semester the MediAfrica postdoc fellow is visiting scholar at the Department for African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

The purpose of the stay is to write up papers and articles based on the recent fieldwork in Cape Town by drawing inspiration from the vibrant research community in Cambridge.

The first ten days in Boston have included lectures by Webb Keane, Arthur Kleinman and Michael Hertzfeld, workshops on nature-culture relations and on cash-transfers and new concepts of work in Southern Africa, meetings with Africanists at Boston University - and a dinner with James Ferguson. As this shameless name-dropping reflects, I have been warmly welcomed to the new research environment, and it is more than a little humbling to be right here in the "Center of Knowledge.”

MediAfrica colleague, professor Jean Comaroff is sponsoring professor for the research stay, and the fellowship is generously funded by HiOAs overseas studies grant. 

Jean Comaroff in conversation with James Ferguson at the African Studies Workshop

Inspiring workshop at Center for African Studies, Harvard

Robinson Hall, Harvard

The Center for African Studies Workshop, taking place in Robinson Hall on campus and headed by Jean and John Comaroff, is a weekly event in which various scholars present work that in some way is related to Africa. This is an initiative that the Comaroffs brought with them from the University of Chicago to Harvard. It has become a hub of the Africanist melieu at Harvard, gathering both students, staff at the univerity as well as interested outsiders and visitors. In addition, the seminar is incorporated into undergraduate and graduate teaching at Department of African and African American Studies ands the papers are thoroughly discussed in classes beforehand. 

On the 26th of September 2016 Jo Helle-Valle gave a presentation, based on fieldwork over a quarter of a century in Botswana, titled "Seduced by Seduction - being a man in Botswana". (Read the abstract here.) The full paper was disseminated a week before to all members of the workshop. The workshop opened with the author presenting the paper's main argument and situating it within a wider academic landscape. Then dr. Lorena Rozzi, from Department of History at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and a visiting scholar to Harvard, served as discussant before the floor was open for all.

Valuable comments will be incorporated into the reworking of the manuscript.

Visiting Scholar at Harvard University

The PI of the project, Prof. Jo Helle-Valle, has recently moved to Harvard University as a Visiting Scholar. The affilation will last until August 2017. Apart from working on data analysis of fieldwork material from Botswana, and manuscripts of various kinds, he will also be able to benefit from the exciting and vibrant academic mileu of Department of African and African American Studies at the African Studies Center.

Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies, is affiliated to mediafrica. Her extraordinary competence on Southern Africa, and South Africa in particular, is an invaluable asset for the project.