African
ResearchInstitute
Annual Report, 1995
African
Research
Return to African Research Institute Home Page.
Executive Committee: Dr David Dorward (Director and Chair), John Horacek (Library Representative), Dr Sue Thomas (English), Prof Martin Chanock (Legal Studies), Elizabeth Dimock (Postgraduate Representative)
Summary Reports Distinguished Visitors Other Activities African Artefacts in Australasia Research Donations to the Institute Conferences and Seminars by Members Publications by members of Institute
The Institute activities focused largely on support for the "African Year 1995" at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. It was the first time Africa had featured in the HRC programme, the considerable funding and human resources of the Humanities Research Centre were devoted to the African programme and a broad range of disciplines within African Studies were represented amongst the outstanding international and Australian scholars invited to the three conferences as either Visiting Fellows or Conference Visitors. Dr Dorward, who was on leave as a Visiting Fellow at the HRC throughout the first semester 1995, served as convenor of one of the three major conferences, as well as on the steering committee of the HRC throughout 1993-1995 in organizing the African programme. Prof. Chanock (Legal Studies, La Trobe) gave one of the major plenary papers at the second conference.
Documentation of African Artefacts in the AntipodesThe project has moved into a second stage. Having located and identified African material culture in the Antipodes, research has begun to detail its acquisition and how it was used in the construction of 'the Other' in late Victorian and Edwardian Australia and New Zealand.
Two separate exhibitions were mounted by Dr Dorward in conjunction with the Humanities Research Centre's Africa Year, a public exhibition entitled "Objects of Adornment: Personal Art in Africa" at the Drill hall Gallery from 8 June to 16 July, and `Photography and the Racial Construction of Gender in South Africa in the late Nineteenth Century', Humanities Research Centre throughout 1995 -1996.
The exhibit at the HRC, `Photography and the Racial Construction of Gender in South Africa in the late Nineteenth Century', comprised artifacts and photographs from the Tunbridge Collection of the African Research Institute at La Trobe University and was designed to link with the second conference theme of `Texts for Understanding'. The display employed photographs and material culture from South Africa as `texts' in the construction of `the Other' in the late Victoria and Edwardian eras.
The Drill Hall Gallery display, titled "Objects of Adornment: Personal Art in Africa", 8 June to 16 July, was used to raise public awareness of the HRC's 1995 African programme. The scope was Sub-Saharan and objects of adornment were selected as being culturally accessible to an unspecialized audience.Western preoccupation with African ritual artifacts raises complex issues of presentation and contextualization requiring a detailed and extensive catalogue. Objects of adornment reflect the commonplace, often produced by their owners rather than trained craftsmen, yet evoke a clear aesthetic accessible to an untrained and unfamiliar audience. The display was the subject on an article in the Canberra Times. Many of the objects in the Drill Hall exhibition were on loan from the Christensen Fund.
The Institute presented a submission on Australian political, security and trade interests in Southern Africa to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, subsequently published by the Committee. Dr Dorward also testified before the committee (later published in Hansard).
Prof. Chanock spent two weeks in South Africa working on land tenure policy.
Nicola Stern continued her field research in Lake Turkana region of northern Kenya, begun in 1993, on the `bluff tuff project, Koobi Fora formation'. Her research seeks to resolve the outstanding debate about behaviour and palaeoecology of Homo erectus during the period 1.5- 1 million years BP.
The Institute established links with the Nigerian Civil Liberties Organization and receives its publications, including the Journal of Human Rights Law and Practice, an increasingly important forum for the expression of Human Rights issues in Nigeria and Africa more generally.
MediaThe Institute continued to provide expertise to the media on African affairs. Dr Dorward provided interviews on a range of subjects relating to African affairs, particularly in the areas of Nigerian human rights, the civil war in Liberia, South Africa and the Sudan to various ABC stations, including Phillip Adams on late Night Live, Radio New Zealand, Radio Australia, various commercial and community stations.
Prof. Chanock delivered a lecture on the Modern Republic for LaTrobe Politics Department and Dr Dorward gave a lecture on trans-national corporations in Africa for the Open Learning Programme, both rebroadcast on Radio National.
Institute SeminarAs explained above, African Studies in 1995 was very much taken up with the HRC conference programme, resulting in a curtailment of the Institute's own seminar programme.
Dr Saul Dubow (Sussex), "Human Origins, Race Typology and the Other Raymond Dart"
Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo, Diocese of Kigeme, Rwanda
Olisa Agbakoba, President of the Nigerian Civil Liberties Organization
Omar Jabir Omar, Eritrean Author and former representative of the Eritrean Liberation Front in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria
H.E., Naudé Steyn, South African High Commissioner to Australia
Petrus Gerber, Acting South African High Commission
H.E., Fessahaie Abraham, Eritrean Ambassador to Australia
H.E., Mr Ian Potter, Australian High Commissioner (Designate) to South Africa
H.E., Hon. Kerry Sibraa, High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, non-resident accreditation as High Commissioner to Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, and Ambassador to Mozambique and Angola
H.E., John Trotter, Australian High Commissioner (Designate) to Kenya, non-resident accreditation to Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, and Uganda, and responsible for Burundi, Djibouti, Rwanda, Somalia and Southern Sudan.The Institute wishes to express its gratitude to Prof. John Barnes (retired) for his generous donation of additional papers and publications relating to his period with the Rhodes-Livingston Institute, Zambia; to Dr David Lucas of the Australian national University for publications on African development, including numerous back issues of research papers from the African Economic Research Consortium, and to Prof David Goldsworthy of Monash University for the donation of books and periodicals on African affairs.
Seminar and Conference papers presented by Members of the Institute outside La Trobe University:Prof Edith Bavin, "Lango and Acholi discourse', American Linguistics Society Summer Linguistic Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Prof. Martin Chanock, "Making and unmaking a segregated land regime: South Africa, 1913-1995", University of Copenhagen
Prof Martin Chanock, `Time in texts. Temporalities and the Power over the Future in South African legal texts", Humanities Research Centre, Canberra
Dr David Dorward, "African Artefacts in the Antipodes", Humanities Research Centre, Canberra
Dr. N. Stern, `The `blue' tuff locality in the Koobi Fora Formation: its age, palaeolandscape context and potential for constructing the behaviour of H. erectus,' Pan-African Congress, Harare, Zimbabwe.E. Bavin, `The Obligation Modality in Western Nilotic languages', in J. Bybee and S. Fleischman, eds., Modality in Grammar and Discourse, (Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995), 107-133.
M. Chanock, "Race and Nation in South African common law', in P. Fitzpatrick, ed., Nationalism, Race and the Rule of Law (Aldershot, 1995)
M. Chanock, `Criminological Science and Criminal Law on the colonial periphery: perception, fantasy and realities in South Africa, 1900-1930", Law and Social Enquiry, 1995
D. Dorward, African section, revised and edited, The SBS World Guide, 4th edition (Port Melbourne: Reed Reference Australia, 1995).
N. Stern, "The `blue' tuff locality at Koobi Fora in northern Kenya" archaeological time and the record of past human behaviour' The Artefact, 18 (1995), 49-54.Return to African Research Institute Home Page.
Dr David Dorward, Director
African Research Institutee-mail < D.Dorward@latrobe.edu.au >