The HUMA Disobedience Workshops convene researchers working with theory to learn from each other and from leading experts in a convivial space and away from their daily routines. The workshops fall within HUMA’s objectives to generate and establish new knowledge and epistemic communities through networks, interdisciplinary conversations and intergenerational transmissions. Disobedience workshops aim to introduce and ground students to critical thinking, writing and the critique of knowledge and knowledge production through deep immersion and engagement with the sociology of ideas, philosophy and historical development of human, Southern, marginalised, and African/Africa-centred knowledges. This is undertaken through close/collective reading and discussion of decolonial, postcolonial, feminist and other decentring theory that offer complementary and alternative ways to engage with dominant ideological frames. The workshops focus on the art of working with ideas, concepts, theory, methodologies, writing, researching and thinking in the humanities in Africa. Workshops, mainly residential retreats, are compulsory for HUMA fellows, with spaces available for interested scholars, students and other researchers at the University of Cape Town and beyond. While meetings are mainly in person, virtual participation and day drive-in visits are welcome. 

Format: A workshop consists of a two-and-a-half-day monastic residential meeting to critically discuss select texts and participants' pre-circulated manuscripts with each other and other experts.

The workshops take place on predefined dates throughout the year. Participants have successfully completed a prior application process and are registered automatically.