Duane Jethro is a Senior Lecturer and undergraduate convenor for the African Studies section in the Department. He specialises in the analysis of the cultural construction of heritage, contested public cultures and material religion. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation post-doctoral alumni. Currently, he serves as an editor of the journal Material Religion and serves on the editorial board of the journal Museums and Social Issues. He is an executive board member of the Association of Critical Heritage studies, and edits the association blog Currents in Critical Heritage Studies. His book Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power is published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Areas of Competence

Cultural heritage; archives; material culture; memory and memory studies; aesthetics; heritage and religion; public culture in South Africa

Key Publications

Jethro, Duane & Karina, Alírio. 2024. 'After the fire: loss, archive and African studies'. Social Dynamics, 50(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2024.2333213

Jethro, Duane. 2024. ‘Crossing Heritage: Material Religion at the Humboldt Forum Berlin’. In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, edited by Pooyan Tamimi-Arab, Brent S. Plate and Jennifer Hughes, 185-204. London: Routledge.

Jethro, Duane and Sharon Macdonald. 2023. ‘Difficult Heritage at the Door: doing heritage research in precarious times’. Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times: Coloniality, Climate Change and COVID-19, edited by Nick Shepherd, 204-218. London: Routledge.

Jethro, Duane & Lehloenya, Mahoati. A. 2023. Call to prayer: the sound of the adhan, heritage and shifting urban identity in Cape Town. Anthropology Southern Africa, 46(3), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2023.2279074

Jethro, Duane. 2021. “Monuments.” In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Hilary Callan and Simon Coleman. London: Wiley Online. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2493

Jethro, Duane. 2020. Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power. London: Bloomsbury Academic.