June Bam-Hutchison

June Bam (Bam-Hutchison), PhD, M.Ed has worked widely in heritage and education in South Africa and internationally for close to two decades. She previously worked as special advisor to the former Minister of Education, the late Professor Kader Asmal, as CEO of South Africa’s first post-apartheid national history project (within the Education Ministry) and also served on a number of heritage boards including on the Council of Iziko Museums.

Over the years, she has been invited to speak about her research themes and work at a number of universities in South Africa and abroad (Norway, Denmark, France, Australia and the UK), as well as being an invited plenary speaker at the International Conference on Diversity in Communities and Organisations, Riga, Latvia, in June 2009.

Her work is also internationally recognised among her peers within the African Diaspora and on the continent. Her former positions and memberships in higher education in the UK include: Fellow, Institute for Commonwealth Studies; Associate Member, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS); Associate Research Fellow, Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York; Visiting Research Fellow, School of Business and Law, Kingston University.

In 2012, she was nominated for the Distinguished Africanist Award, African Studies Association of the UK. Her positions in community development work include: National Steering Group Member, Africa-UK, London, 2011 – 2013; Coordinator, SA-UK Charity Network; Save the Children, UK Head Office, Project Manager on combatting child labour in collaboration with offices in Pakistan, India, Spain and Bolivia. She has also served on boards for investment in African communities, such as HOPEHIV Africa and the Black History Foundation, and as fundraiser for CHIVA-Africa.

She was the recipient of the National 2008 UK GG2 Tenth Anniversary Women and Leadership in Diversity High Achievement through Adversity Award for her work abroad in history, heritage and education.  

Her work was also recognised in the awarding of the UNESCO Peace Education 2008 Award to South Africa’s Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

In the UK, she worked as advisor on Arts and Culture, higher education projects and research partnerships for the South African High Commission over a period of seven years. She also worked as an advisor to the British Museum, the V&A Museum, the International Museum of Slavery (Liverpool), Bristol Libraries, the Science Museum, the Royal Geographical Society, and the British Film Institute.

Among others, she served for three years as former Honorary Secretary of the African Studies Association, UK, as Co-chair of the Committee on Equitable Partnerships for the Greater London Authority’s African and Asian Heritage Diversity Task Force, and as Diversity Manager, Museum of London Group (which involved the delivery of the first permanent gallery on the transatlantic slave trade in London: London, Sugar and Slavery).

Her research work has continued with her return to South Africa as coordinator of the University of Cape Town’s first Pre-Colonial Catalytic Conference held in March 2014 as part of the new Humanities Initiative of the Department of Higher Education and Training. The main aim of the project is to coordinate a network of researchers from various institutions in South Africa and beyond in order to construct a pre-colonial history of southern Africa. She currently leads a course on Sites of Memory for Stanford University’s overseas programme in South Africa. Her current research interests are contemporary Khoisan identities and their link to social justice in South Africa.

Bam-Hutchison is Archive & Public Culture’s Research Manager, which includes supporting the Five Hundred Year Archive Project.