Potential for digital heritage

I recently published a blog post on the Archival Platform on the democratising potential of new digital technologies. This was in part a response to the recent workshop on the draft National Policy on the Digitisation of Heritage Resources. The draft policy focuses on institutional issues relating to the digitisation of heritage resources. While these …

South African Indian English

Professor Rajend Mesthrie of UCT’s Department of English Languages and Literature recently launched a1700-word Dictionary of South African Indian English, published by UCT Press this year, which marks the 150th anniversary of the first ship bringing Indian labourers to then-Natal. Mesthrie wrote the book as he feels that our current dictionaries of English in South …

Archive and Public Culture Workshop

I recently attended the Archives and Public Culture Research Initiative quarterly workshop held at the Jon Berndt Thought Space. It was an intensive three days in which a number of working papers from various disciplines, broadly relating to the archive, were presented. Papers included topics such as the early years of black radio broadcasts in …

Archive and Everyday Life Conference

I recently attended the Archive and Everyday Life Conference held by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The programme comprised a vast array of multidisciplinary papers relating to a broad concept of archive. Archivists, theorists, literature scholars, anthropologists and filmmakers from Canada, the United Kingdom, America, …