Humanitarian Encounters | Matthew Hilton

Humanitarian Encounters: Bessie Head, Patrick van rensburg and the politics of development in southern Africa

About the talk...

Patrick van Rensburg was a renowned humanitarian worker and an anti-apartheid activist. In 1982 he was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award for his pioneering model of ‘education with production’ practiced at his famous Swaneng Hill School and in the Serowe Brigades. Bessie Head became Botswana’s most famous novelist. Her fiction and non-fiction drew heavily on van Rensburg’s projects. Both admired one another, though at times they had a tempestuous relationship. By framing the development encounter through Head’s letters and writing, Hilton explores how aid work served the interests of so many and not only the intended beneficiaries. Moreover, by uncovering both protagonists’ psychological breakdowns, Hilton amplifies the ‘nervous conditions’ of development during the decades of decolonisation.

About the speaker...

Matthew Hilton is a social historian with interests in the history of humanitarianism, consumer society and social activism, both in Britain and globally. He did his PhD at Lancaster University before spending nearly twenty years at the University of Birmingham. Hilton joined Queen Mary in 2016 as Vice-Principal for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Host or Publisher Northrop Frye Centre