The African Studies Unit offers a full academic programme, concentrated at the graduate level but also including some undergraduate courses. The following degrees are offered as part of the graduate programme:

  • Postgraduate Diploma in African Studies
  • Honours in African Studies
  • Taught Masters in African Studies (in which the dissertation counts 50%)
  • Research Masters in African Studies (by dissertation only)
  • PhD in African Studies

The African Studies Unit is staffed by faculty with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, who work collaboratively as an interdisciplinary team. Existing teaching strengths and research directions include:

  • African and African diasporic critical and intellectual traditions
  • Postcolonial and decolonial theory
  • Questions of public culture, heritage and memory
  • Questions of archive and curation
  • Questions of African literature and culture
  • Agrarian Studies and questions of land reform and redistribution
  • African political economy

Students have substantial freedom in constructing a curriculum that suits their interests. There are also two named streams in African Studies:

  • An Honours degree in African Literature and Culture
  • Honours and Masters degrees in Public Culture and Heritage in Africa

 

Full details of our academic programme are available in the Humanities Faculty Handbooks http://www.students.uct.ac.za/students/study/handbooks/current

For many of our degrees, we admit students both at the beginning of the year (February), and mid-year at the start of the second semester (July).

Interested students are invited to email faculty working in their area of interest for further information, or to arrange a Skype meet.

Applications to the African Studies Unit are made through the central university application system https://uct.ac.za/students/applications-apply-postgraduate-qualifications/applications-and-registration

Students looking for financial assistance are directed to the university’s postgraduate funding office http://www.students.uct.ac.za/students/fees-funding/postgraduate-degree-funding

Guidelines of the African Studies Association for Members’ Ethical Conduct in Research and Other Professional Undertakings in Africa: http://www.africanstudies.org/about-asa/ethical-guidelines

For students in the department:

African Studies Unit Ethics Form 

African Studies Unit Informed Consent Form 

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