Kylie Thomas

Kylie Thomas was a National Research Foundation post-doctoral fellow in the Archive & Public Culture research initiative in 2009–10. She teaches and writes about the history and theory of photography; contemporary South African art and visual culture; the history and representation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; violence during and after apartheid; and about visual activism. She was an American Council of Learned Societies African Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow based in the Centre for Human Research at the University of the Western Cape in 2012, where she conducted research for the Violence and Transition Project. She is the recipient of a Volkswagen Foundation workshop grant for a project on gender, violence and visual activism. Her book, Impossible Mourning: Visuality and HIV/AIDS after apartheid, has been published by Bucknell University Press in the United States and is forthcoming with Wits University Press in South Africa in 2014. Her recent articles include ‘Zanele Muholi’s Intimate Archive: Photography and Post-apartheid Lesbian Lives’ (2010); ‘Photography, apartheid and the “Road to Reconciliation”’ (2012); and ‘Wounding Apertures: Violence, affect and photography during and after apartheid’ (2012). She edits Social Dynamics, an interdisciplinary journal of African Studies, and is part of the editorial collective of the journal, Feminist Africa. She has taught in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University and is now working in the Department of English at the University of Stellenbosch.