Workshop “African Public History and Community Archives”, 1-3 November 2024

November 1-3, 2024

Graduate Seminar Room, Wits University

Organised by the Wits History Workshop and the Afrikan Freedom Station, and supported by IFAS-research, this closed workshop gathered for the first time 30 researchers and archivists from South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana and Nigeria, to collectively think about public history.

Public history has over the past decade experienced impressive growth internationally, reflected in the proliferation of graduate programmes at universities, especially in North America and Europe, with new developments in Asia and Latin America. In recent years, the Wits History Workshop has been involved in the International Federation for Public History, the primary global coordinating body of public history at universities. A conclusion has been the dire absence of African representation.

To counter that tendency, a workshop of public historians based at universities and in communities took place place in Johannesburg, so as to assess the state of public history and consider how to support its development on the continent. This approach is informed by a similar process undertaken in Latin America, which will be drawn on in the workshop.

The workshop will take place over three days from November 1 to 3, 2024 and will convene at Wits University and the Afrikan Freedom Station. The final day will involve visits to sites of the community partners of the Soweto History and Archives Project.