Teaching & Training
Training & Training
I was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University in 2003 and received a teaching award for my seminar on performance and the arts of Africa.
In South Africa I taught in the undergraduate Art History & Visual Culture programme at Rhodes University from 2006 to 2017. My courses included Carnivals and Street Parades in Africa and the African Diaspora; Landscape in Southern Africa; Portraiture in Africa ; Heritage and Site-Specific Art in South Africa; Modernism and African Art; Diaspora and Displacement; Power and Protest in South African Art; Race and Identity in South African Art; Violence and the Aesthetics of Crime; The Body in Contemporary Art; Veils and Veiling in Middle Eastern Art; China and Africa: Place, Transnationalism and the Global South; Theories of Performance; Critical Issues in Contemporary African Art; Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa; and Arts of Africa and the Geopolitics of Knowledge Creation.
At a postgraduate level, I have supervised over 70 Honours students, 40 Masters students and 11 PhD students. The vast majority of these students have been funded by my grant holder linked bursaries associated with my National Research Foundation and Mellon research programmes. PhD candidates I have supervised include Nomusa Makhubu, Rachel Baasch, Zamansele Nsele, Andrew Mulenga, Nancy Dantas, Gladys Kalichini, Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, Claire Nalukenge, Binjun Hu, Lifang Zhang (all graduated) and Winniefred Naluzze (in process). Our Postdoctoral Fellows include Binjun Hu, Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, Isaiah Tunde Ogunjimi, Oluwatosin Kooshima Tume, Danielle Becker, Quadri Oluwasegun, Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, Rachel Baasch, Ganiyu Jimoh, Stephen Folaranmi, Eyitayo Ijisakin, and Kehinde Adepgba.
Since I founded the Arts Lounge in 2011, I have encouraged my students to actively participate in our arts conversations and curated events. This strengthens team work, peer-to-peer learning and support, and it provides students with the opportunity to engage directly with visiting artists, academics and cultural workers.
From 2016 to 2019 I ran a series of Publishing Workshops in different African cities specifically for scholars based in Africa. From 2017, these workshops were supported by my intra-Africa Mellon research programme, Research of the South: Positioning Africa (PROSPA). The goals of the workshops were 1) to increase and strengthen publishing in the field of the visual and performing arts of Africa, 2) to increase international publications in the field produced by scholars based on the African continent, and 3) to prepare articles for publication in relevant scholarly journals. We also spent time visiting art and culture institutions in each respective city.
The first Publishing Workshop was hosted by Rhodes University and funded by my National Research Foundation programme, Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa. I led the workshop and participants included Angelo Kakande, Pauline Bullen, Eria Nsubuga, Aidah Nalubowa, Fadzai Muchemwa, Andrew Mulenga and George Kyeyune.
The 2017 PROSPA Publishing Workshop took place in Kampala, Uganda, and I co-led it with Amanda Tumusiime. Other articipants included Rose Namubiru Kirumira, Ganiyu Jimoh, Mduduzi Xakaza, Philip Kwesiga, Justine Nabbagala, Sarah Nakisanze, Joan Kekimuri, Dorah Kasozi, Stephen Folaranmi, Margaret Nagawa, Annette Sebba, Rachel Baasch, Eyitayo Ijisakin, Edward Nobel Bisamunyu and Amanda Hlengwa (a critical reader for the workshop). We visited the Makerere University Art Museum, the 32° East Art Centre, and various artist’s studio spaces.
The 2018 PROSPA Publishing Workshop was hosted by Rhodes University and was a collaboration with the blaxTARLINES collective from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Pamela Nichols led some of our secession, and participants included Ruth Simbao and Stephen Folaranmi from Rhodes University; Peju Layiwola from the University of Lagos; and Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, kąrî'kạchä seid'ou, Edwin Kwesi Bodjawah, George Ampratwum, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu and Ibrahim Mohammed Mahama from KNUST. This workshop resulted in the special issue of African Arts co-edited by Ruth Simbao and Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu.
The 2019 PROSPA Publishing Workshop took place at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and was co-led with Jimoh Ganiyu who at the time was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa at Rhodes University. The workshop was led by Ruth Simbao and Ganiyu Jimoh, and other participants were Tume Tosin, Olusegun Titus, Lekan Balogun, Akinwale Onipede, Abiodun Akande and Kehinde Adepegba. Following the workshop, I presented the talk, Reaching Sideways As We Cast New Shadows: Counter-Narratives and a Geopolitics of Proximity in the Remaking of “African Studies” at the UNILAG Institute for African and Diaspora Studies. This was followed by the performance by Jelili Atiku (see Film & Photography). We also visited Chief Nike Okundaye, who was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Rhodes University earlier that year.
