Media Studies and Production


Martha Evans has an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Cape Town, where she now teaches journalism and media studies courses. She has worked as a writer and copy-editor, editing the work of a number of top South African writers.

Her research interests include South African media and history, national identity and the media, broadcasting during the apartheid era, transitional justice and the media, and the representation of history in film. She is the author of Broadcasting the End of Apartheid: Live Television and the Birth of the New South Africa (2014) and Speeches that Shaped South Africa: From Malan to Malema (2017).


Selected Recent Publications:

  • Evans, MJ (2019), "News from Robben Island: Journalists' visits to Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment", Journal of Southern African Studies, 45(6), pp. 1 111–30.
  • Evans, MJ (2020), "Nelson Mandela's 'show trials': An analysis of press coverage of Mandela's court appearances". Critical Arts: North–South Cultural & Media Studies, 34(1), pp. 10-24.
  • Evans, MJ (2017), Speeches that Shaped South Africa: From Malan to Malema. Johannesburg: Penguin Random House.
  • Evans, MJ (2016), "Televising South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: What liveness tells us about the Commission; what the Commission tells us about liveness". Media, Culture & Society, 38(5), pp. 704—20.
  • Evans, MJ (2014), Broadcasting the End of Apartheid: Live Television and the Birth of a New South Africa. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Evans, MJ, & I Glenn (2010), “‘TIA – This Is Africa’: Afropessimism and narrative film”. Black Camera, 2 (1), pp. 1–35. Evans, MJ (2010), "Mandela and the televised birth of the rainbow nation". National Identities, 12 (3), pp. 309–326.

Contact details

martha.evans@uct.ac.za 

(021) 650 2856

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