Forging research ties between South Africa and Chile
IMAGE: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CHILE
This month, María Esperanza Rock Núñez joined the Archive & Public Culture research initiative as an Honorary Research Scholar. Rock Núñez is a researcher from Chile who completed her undergraduate studies in Theory and Art History at the Universidad de Chile, where she is currently studying towards her PhD degree in Ethno-history.
Her career has involved research and teaching in relation to the arts, culture and heritage of local towns in Chile. She started as an assistant professor at Universidad de Chile in 2006, and, from 2008 to 2011, worked as a full-time professor at private universities in Chile before embarking on her PhD research.
Rock Núñez has been involved in several government projects relating to the indigenous people of Chile, and her PhD project is focused on the Southern part of Chile, which was the main area of conflict between the Spanish colonists and the indigenous population from the 16th to the early 19th century. This period also saw the intensification of coal mining industrialisation.
'I am very grateful to be part of the APC initiative, an interesting enterprise that allows for problem solving and critical questioning,' says Rock Núñez, who attended her first APC research workshop at UCT in July. 'The paper I presented at July's workshop is about perceptions of the indigenous people from my country. Since the sixteenth century onwards, many letters and travel diaries of Spanish colonists have been found, which have described how the Native American people lived. My analysis focuses on two manuscripts - the writings of a Fransiscan priest and those of a Jesuit priest - combined with other documents. I hope that it might contribute to understanding the time during Arauco war