Dr Nicola Cloete is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art & Heritage Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Born in South Africa she completed an undergraduate degree in Dramatic Art at Wits University, a Master’s degree in Gender Culture and Politics at Birkbeck College, London and worked in academia, and television as a researcher before returning to Wits to take up a position in the Wits School of Arts. She completed her PhD in Political Studies at Wits University.

Dr Cloete’s research and teaching focus on an interdisciplinary approach to visual and cultural studies with a specific emphasis on memory studies, slavery in South Africa, and gender and race theories as they pertain to the politics of representation. Her recent research examines the memory politics in representations of slavery in post-Apartheid South Africa. She is currently writing a book, supported by the Advancing Humanities Grant, called Holding Memory: Slavery and Post-Apartheid Cultural production. Dr Cloete has recently been awarded the Zumkher Prize for Scholarship in Public Memory (2022), the Harvard South Africa Fellowship (2011-2012) and serves of the editorial board of academic journals, African Studies and De Arte. She has also served on the boards of the Market Theatre Foundation (2008-2011) and the advisory panel for Music and Theatre of the National Arts Council.

In her teaching Dr Cloete is committed to interdisciplinary and feminist pedagogical approaches. She teaches courses across art history, critical heritage and memory studies and film, visual and performing arts.

Annette Wentworth is a poet, essayist and PhD student at the University of Alberta. She has been involved in community arts and HIV/AIDS projects in Southern Africa since 2005. Her research areas are gender and memory, witnessing and remembrance practices, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa. Other areas of interest are arts-based research, anti-racist and anti/decolonizing research and practice. Annette currently divides her time between Alberta, Canada and the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Annette Wentworth is a poet, essayist and PhD student at the University of Alberta. She has been involved in community arts and HIV/AIDS projects in Southern Africa since 2005. Her research areas are gender and memory, witnessing and remembrance practices, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa. Other areas of interest are arts-based research, anti-racist and anti/decolonizing research and practice. Annette currently divides her time between Alberta, Canada and the Eastern Cape of South Africa.