Athambile Masola: APC's Guest Scholar 2020-21

Over the years, the APC has hosted a series of special scholars because of their particular areas of expertise and their pertinence to work within our research initiative. The form that the guest scholarship takes varies and is tailored to suit the interests of both the guest and the APC. The position of Guest Scholar is designed to expose our students and researchers to ideas and work they might otherwise not readily encounter.

Athambile Masola is the Archive and Public Culture Guest Scholar for July 2020 to June 2021. The guest scholarship is designed to bring her particular research interests in, and knowledge of, key figures among the early African literati and in the early black press into conversation with APC work on changing African political and historical discourses and their relationship to archive and understandings of the past. The opportunity here is for a conjoining of two specific and complementary areas of expertise and interest.

Athambile has a PhD from the University-Currently-Known-As-Rhodes focusing on black women’s historiography, intellectual histories and life writing. She is a member of the Bua-Lit Collective, a group of researchers and educators advocating the use of African languages as a social justice issue. She is the founder of Asinakuthula Collective, a group of teachers and researchers who aim to challenge the continued marginalisation of women’s narratives in the school curriculum; the Collective also hosts the Maxeke-Mgqwetho Annual Lecture. She is a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar (2010). Athambile is one of the creators of the podcast Umoya: On African Spirituality. Her writing has been published in a variety of publications as well as magazines and newspapers such as Prufrock, Sable Literary Magazine, Al Jazeera, Mail & Guardian, Sawubona, online blogs and academic journals.