Global Herstoriography: an African perspective through the lens of plants

in-person: venue: G1, 7 Priory Road

online: sign up on Zoom

In the recent past, innovative decolonial approaches in the interdisciplinary fields towards the study of Africa have emerged. These include research methodologies which address the limitations of Eurocentric approaches to knowledge production about Africa’s deep pasts and our understanding of interconnected links to present crises, such as climate change. An example of such insights is gained in research on long-survived feminist indigenous Khoe ‘Ausi’ intergenerational ecological and medicinal knowledge around the wetlands on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape in South Africa. At the colonized Cape of Good Hope, ‘Ausi’ knowledge was superficially described as the ‘kruidvrou’ (woman of herbs) in early European travelers’ accounts. The matrifocal globally interconnected and metaphorical ‘Ausi’ knowledge of environmental sustainability and medicinal practices is illustration of Africa’s deep-time interconnectedness. How could this feminist African perspective through the knowledge of plants help us to rethink Africa’s epistemological relationality in the world?

June Bam is Professor in Education and director of the Centre for Education Rights, University of Johannesburg and Africa-Oxford Fellow 2025 - 2026. She is author of the award-winning monograph Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter (2021, Fanele). June has previously worked as special government education adviser for South Africa and has held positions in teaching and research for several years with (amongst others) the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past: University of York, and Stanford University. She taught at the University of Cape Town for many years, where she also held the position of Associate Professor in African Feminism. She has led research projects in her research area which involve various global universities, museums and African heritage institutions.

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Host or Publisher Perivoli Africa Research Centre, Univ. of Bristol