Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
09 March 2018 Photo Eugene Seegers
Research group rethinks white societies in Southern Africa
Profs David Roediger and Jonathan Hyslop, international delegates who presented keynote addresses at the workshop.

Poor, Precarious, White? Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa, 1930s-1990s is a two-day workshop that was recently convened by the International Studies Group (ISG) with financial support from the office of the Vice-Rector: Academic, on the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Bloemfontein Campus. The event drew together a range of historical research on poor and working-class whites across Southern Africa during the twentieth century, with the goal of uncovering wider histories of race. 

In his welcoming speech, Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, stated that race and its histories have taken on a new and renewed significance, not only in South Africa, but also globally. He said, “I am very proud to see the ISG organising and hosting such a wonderful workshop. It has attracted some of the leading intellectuals in the world on critical studies related to whiteness, and though its focus is on the histories of whites, I am pleased to see that a large number of presentations concern the wider questions of race.”

Mentioning several areas of concern on the world scene, such as policies issuing forth from the Trump government in the USA, violence against new migrants across Europe, as well as challenges of race as exhibited by specific events at the UFS, Prof Petersen said that it is particularly significant for this event to be hosted on one of our campuses. Quoting from Prof Neil Roos’ inaugural lecture held the previous evening, Prof Petersen added, “The histories of race offer the opportunity to rethink the approaches and methodologies of social history, and thus revitalise … the discipline.”

Participants in the workshop came from across Southern Africa, Europe, and the United States, and included leading scholars in the field. The first keynote was by the author of the acclaimed book The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (published in 1991), Prof David Roediger, who currently serves as Foundation Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas. In his keynote entitled Settlers and Immigrants in Critical Whiteness Studies, Prof Roediger dealt with topics such as Southern Whiteness and Indigeneity in Australia and New Zealand, the relationship between migration and race, as well as how the current focus on the role of the white working class in the election of Donald Trump overlooks the complicity of the middle-class and elite whites who also supported him.

The second keynote address was delivered by Prof Jonathan Hyslop of the Colgate University, on the topic Workers called White and Classes called Poor: The ‘White Working Class’ and ‘Poor Whites’ in Southern Africa, 1910-1994. Prof Hyslop offered a sweeping overview of poor and working-class white experiences in Southern Africa, suggesting attention to comparisons and connections as a way of analysing and understanding the history of the region. 

The workshop was organised by Drs Danelle van Zyl-Hermann and Duncan Money, both Postdoctoral Research Fellows in the ISG, in conjunction with Prof Neil Roos, who is also based in the ISG. The research papers presented at the workshop covered topics as diverse as the experiences of white female civil-service employees in colonial Zimbabwe, French immigrants to the apartheid-era Vanderbijlpark steelworks, and white working-class resistance to state regulation. The papers are to be published in an edited collection which will be included in the Routledge African Studies series.

News Archive

UFS subscribes to ResearchResearch
2006-02-20

ResearchResearch is the world's leading publisher of news and information for the international research community. From their offices in London, Sydney, Washington, Brussels, Amsterdam and Sweden their editorial team provides unrivalled expertise and in-depth news coverage of research policy and politics, and comprehensive listings of funding opportunities and sponsors across all disciplines.

The information on this site is stored in three interlinked databases:
1. Funding opportunities
2. Sponsors
3. News

Funding opportunities
Records include a detailed abstract of the opportunity including details of eligibility requirements, deadline, the original text of the call (where available); and links to the application form, specific page of the sponsor's web site, contact details of programme management and records in our Sponsors database describing the relevant research programme and sponsor. Note: You will only see funding opportunities that you and your researchers are eligible to apply for.

The Funding opportunities database has been designed to be easy to use for occasional users but offers complex search options for regular users. Opportunities can be browsed by Sponsor, by discipline, type of sponsor, purpose of award, by deadline, eligibility, and so on.

Sponsors
Records include the objectives, eligibility requirements and application procedures of sponsors along with relevant links to the sponsors’ web pages. Note: You will only see sponsors that you and your researchers are eligible to apply for funding from.

News
Keep up to date with global research developments. Research Day Worldwide, a roundup of all the latest in research policy and politics from the UK, US, Europe, Australia & New Zealand, Asia and Africa.

Access to ResearchResearch.com is available from any PC on the university network, though staff is encouraged to obtain their own username and password, which allows access from a PC off the University network, as well as allowing staff to set up customised funding alerts on their own areas of research and subscribe to news alerts (click on Apply for a personal account under my institution's license to register and obtain a username and password).

Other facilities include the ability to bookmark information, collate and distribute it to colleagues in the form of a "Magazine". This is especially useful for staff with a research co-ordination role.
Further detail is available from the Directorate Research Development (Dr Aldo Stroebel, stroebea.rd@mail.uovs.ac.za, 401 3506).

 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept