Dr Hayley Roberts

Dr Hayley Hayes-Roberts is a 2023 UCT CAS Postdoctoral Fellow and Design Historian. Areas of expertise, experience and research include post-apartheid museum design and curation, cultural branding/tourism, memory methodologies, visual history, intangible cultural heritage, museum and heritage studies, material culture studies, forced removals, cape slavery, design thinking, social, textile, fashion and oral History, craft skills, expressive arts in healing trauma, and regeneration of the social self. Hayley began her career as a Graphic and Textile designer, later completing a B: Tech Degree in Post-school Education and lectured in Textile History, Design and Visual Art. Hayley holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage studies, UWC (2010) and a MA in History with a specialization in Museum and Heritage studies, cum laude, UWC (2012).  Her most recent position was at UCT as an Andrew Mellon funded History Access Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2021) http://www.historyaccess.uct.ac.za. Prior to that worked at Iziko Museums of South Africa (2014-2020) in Social History education resource development. As a senior researcher, from 2011-2013, headed the Two Rivers Project, a District Six Museum initiative to work with the memories of forced removals at six sites in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. A collaged Two Rivers visual memory box archival system and education resource efolder was designed for the museum. Recipient of DAC and NIHSS scholarships (2010-2020). Enjoys working at the UCT Writing Centre, beekeeping and craft.

Research Topics: Cultural Branding, Tourism and Representative Agency: The National Khoi and San Heritage Route and Indigenous Knowledge Sector Futurities in South Africa

Abstract: In tourism advertising, South Africa is packaged and promoted as a “World in one Country.” This concept and the visual tropes that accompany it are rooted in colonial and apartheid-era notions of tribalism and cultural separatism.  The National Khoi and San Heritage Route aims to identify, conserve, map and promote the heritage of the Khoi, Nama, Griekwa, Khorana and San through the identification and promotion of significant Khoi and San heritage sites, approved by Cabinet on 3 June 2020. In order to achieve this goal the proposed Route, in SANParks, requires an independent analysis of the emerging sector’s representation in the cultural branding and tourism economies, especially at the local level. This paper will explore how the proposed National Khoi and San Heritage Route and attendant indigenous and linguistic knowledge systems and practices contest the established pre-packaged World in One Country trope and unsettle the tourist gaze in post-transition South Africa.