Duane Jethro is a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate 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 in South Africa and Berlin, Germany. 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 and Public Art Dialogue. 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 and  Berlin Germany.

Latest Publications

Jethro, Duane and George Mahashe. 2025. ‘Unsettling Spirits: An Unfinished Conversation Towards Provenance and Artistic Work’. In Artistic Provenance Research, edited by Tal Adler and Sharon Macdonald. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

Access the chapter here.

Jethro, Duane, and Irene Stengs. 2025. ‘Unlocking Contentious Heritage Matters: Moral Economies and the Commodification of Traumatic Heritage.’ Heritage & Society: 1-10.

Access the article here.

Jethro, Duane and Irene Stengs. 2025. ‘Special Issue: Contentious Matter: Moral economies and the commodification of traumatic heritage.’ Heritage and Society Journal.18(3).

Access the full special issue here.

Coates, A. T., Jethro, D., & Maldonado-Estrada, A. 2025. ‘Special Issue: Key Terms for Material Religion 2025.’ Material Religion, 1–10. 

Access the article here.

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.