Vishakha Desai

Special Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University, Professor of Professional Practice at the School of International and Public Affairs and Senior Advisor for Global Programs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, United States.

Dr. Vishakha Desai is Special Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University and Professor of Practice at its School of International and Public Affairs. She also serves as Senior Advisor for Global Programs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From 2004 through 2012, Dr. Desai served as President and CEO of the Asia Society, a global organisation dedicated to strengthening partnerships between Asia and the U.S. through arts education and foreign policy. In addition to several featured articles, and numerous editorials, Dr. Desai’s publications include: Asian Art History in the 21st Century (March 2008), Gods Guardians and Lovers: Temple Sculpture of North India (November 1993), and Life at Court: Art for India’s Rulers (June 1985). A recipient of five honorary degrees, Dr. Desai holds a B.A. in Political Science from Bombay University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Art History from the University of Michigan.

Mark Fleischman

Director, Managing Trustee and Professor Drama Department at the University of Cape Town, South-Africa.

Mark Fleischman is Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Cape Town and artistic director of Magnet Theatre, an independent theatre company established in 1987 in Johannesburg and based in Cape Town since 1994. He has created and directed many performance works for the company that have been performed nationally and internationally over the past 29 years and is involved in development projects in urban townships and rural communities using theatre as a tool for social justice and transformation.

His articles have appeared in the South African Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review and Theatre Research International as well as numerous edited collections, most recently in Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd (eds.) Performing Heritage (Manchester University Press – 2011) and Nicholas Whybrow (ed.) Performing Cities (Palgrave Macmillan – 2014). He is editor of Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows in the Studies in International Performance series at Palgrave (2015). He is an active member of the Performance as Research Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research and was co-convenor from 2009-2013.

Gavin Jantjes

Gavin Jantjes has spent a great part of his professional life in exile from apartheid, living and working as an artist, a curator and educator and museum director in Germany, England, the United States and Norway. The United Nation‘s High Commission for Refugees and its Special Commission on apartheid, commissioned him to support their campaigns against apartheid in 1989 and 1990. Norway and South-Africa.

His paintings and graphic work has been collected internationally including by the Tate Gallery and the V&A, UK; the National Museum of African Art Smithsonian, US; the South African National Gallery Cape Town; The Hermitage Museum Saint Petersburg, Russia; Gothenburg Art Museum Sweden; Henie Onstad Art Center Oslo and numerous private collections.

He was a senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK. He served as a trustee of the Tate, Whitechapel and Serpentine Galleries and was called to the Arts Council of Great Britain (today the Arts Council of England), where he structured the Council’s national policy on cultural diversity. He was Advisor to the Arts Council on the creation of INIVA, the Institute for International Visual Art, and to CIRCLE, the European Commission Policy Group, for its special report on diversity. He was appointed artistic director of Henie Onstad Art Center (1998 -2004) and as senior curator for the National Museum in Oslo (2004 - 2014). He was a member of the finding commission for Documenta 12 and he served as a trustee and advisor to the Office for Contemporary Art OCA in Oslo. He is the initiator of the Visual Century Project and author of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907 - 2007 volumes I - IV, published by Wits University Press in 2011.

He lives and works in Oslo and Cape Town.

Aino Laberenz

Set- and Costume Designer, Co-curator of the award winning German pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale 2011, Director of the Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH (Opera Village Burkina Faso), Germany.

Aino Laberenz had studied art history before she assisted as a costume designer atSchauspielhaus Bochum between 2001 and 2002. Later she worked as a photographer and costume designer at several theaters like Schauspielhaus Bochum, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Volksbühne Berlin, Wiener Burgtheater, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Opera of Manaus in Brasil, Bayreuther Festspiele, Staatsoper Berlin and Oper Bonn. Aino Laberez designed costumes for numerous short films and worked together with René Pollesch, Schorsch Kamerun and regularly with Armin Petras.

In 2010 Aino Laberenz took over the management of Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH, continuing Christoph Schlingensief’s project The African Opera Village, established in 2009.

Xolela Mangcu

Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, Oppenheimer Fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University. South Africa.

Dr. Xolela Mangcu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, and Oppenheimer Fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author and co-author of eight books and numerous journal articles, book chapters and newspaper columns. His book on black consciousness icon, Steve Biko Biko: A Biography (Tafelberg 2012) was finalist in the Sunday Ties Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, the Recht Malan Prize, and the South African Book Awards. His latest book on race in contemporary South Africa, The Colour of our Future, was published by Wits University Press in 2015.

Mangcu was the Founder of the Platform for Public Deliberation and the Founding Executive Director of the Steve Biko Foundation. He obtained his Ph.D in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and holds fellowships at Brookings Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rockefeller Foundation. His research interests are in African intellectual history and biography, comparative race studies and transformation of higher education in South Africa. The Sunday Times has described Mangcu as 'possibly the most prolific public intellectual in South Africa'.

Njabulo Simakahle Ndebele

Academic and writer, South Africa

Professor Njabulo Ndebele has served at highest levels in a number of South African and Lesotho tertiary institutions including Pro Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Lesotho, Vice-Rector of the University of the Western Cape, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the North and Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Cape Town. The recipient of more than ten honorary doctorates and numerous literary awards, Ndebele is considered to be one of the country’s foremost thinkers.

Ndebele obtained his Ph.D. in American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Denver, USA, having completed his MA in English Literarture at Cambridge University. He is the author of eight books including The Cry of Winnie Mandela (David Philips, 2003) and Fine Lines from the Box: further thoughts about our country (Umuzi, 2007).

Oussama Rifahi

Executive Director of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Lebanon

Oussama Rifahi joined the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture as Executive Director in July 2010. Previously, he was Managing Director for Museum Development in New York with Global Cultural Asset Management, and provided cultural consultancy services to governments, cities, foundations and private collectors in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. As Director of Special Projects for the Guggenheim Foundation, Rifahi led feasibility studies of modern and contemporary museums in Lithuania and France in 2007. From 2003 to 2006, he was project manager at Mubadala in Abu Dhabi and an advisor to the chairman of Tourism Development and Investment Company - TDIC. Rifahi directed the market analysis, strategy definition and development of the business model for tourism and culture in Abu Dhabi and supported the first architectural developments on the cultural district of Saadiyat Island, as well as the initial negotiations between Abu Dhabi and the Louvre and Guggenheim museums.

Albie Sachs

Judge and anti-apartheid activist, South Africa.

Albert (Albie) Louis Sachs, the son of Lithuanian Jewish parents who fled persecution in the Russian Empire and emigrated to South Africa, served two terms in the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest post-apartheid court. Having been detained without trial in the 1960s because of his anti-apartheid activism, Sachs went into exile in Britain in 1966, where he worked with the banned ANC. Sachs moved to Mozambique after it gained independence, learned Portuguese and became a professor of law at Eduardo Mondlane University, the premier tertiary institution. In 1988, Sachs was the victim of a carbomb, the work of agents of the apartheid government, in which he lost his right arm. After 24 years of exile, Sachs returned to South Africa in 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations, and was appointed to the Constitutional Committee, mandated to draft a new constitution for a non-racial, democratic state. Sachs played an influential role in the drafting of the Bill of Rights now enshrined in South Africa’s constitution. During his Presidency, Nelson Mandela appointed Sachs to one of the 11 seats on the new Constitutional Court. He played a major role both in the design of the building for the Court as well as in the murals, paintings, sculptures and other art works which has won the building international acclaim. Among other groundbreaking judgments, Sachs wrote the judgement legalising same-sex marriage in South Africa. He continues to have a significant interest in African arts generally, and visual art in particular.

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa

Director of Research at the Nagenda International Academy of Art & Design (NIAAD), Uganda, Research Fellow at the Academy of Art & Design in Bergen (KHiB), Norway and Research Associate in the Institute of Art Education at the Zurich University of the Arts.

EMMA WOLUKAU-WANAMBWA is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature at Cambridge University and Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. She is Director of Research at the Nagenda International Academy of Art & Design (NIAAD) in Namulanda, Uganda and has recently been appointed Research Fellow at the Academy of Art & Design in Bergen (KHiB), Norway. She is also Research Associate in the Institute of Art Education at the Zurich University of the Arts (CH) and Convener of the Another Roadmap for Arts Education network’s Africa Cluster (http://another.zhdk.ch).

Emma works in a wide range of media, formats and contexts, including installation, sound, video, photography, printmaking, performance and writing. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: Kabbo Ka Muwala (National Gallery of Zimbabwe, ZW, Makerere University Art Gallery, UG & Kunsthalle Bremen, DE), Feedback: Art, Africa and the Eighties (Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, US), Greetings To Those Who Asked About Me (Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, EG), Artificial Facts (Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden, DE & CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, ES) and Giving Contours to Shadows (Savvy Contemporary/Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, DE). She is currently revising her recent essay, ‘Margaret Trowell’s School of Art: A Case Study in Colonial Subject Formation’ for The Arts as White Property: Interrogating Racism within Arts in Education - an academic publication edited by Amelia Kraehe, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández and B. Stephen Carpenter II that will be published in the US next year.

Dikobe Maude

University of Botswana Travelling Theatre, University of Botswana, Botswana

Dr. Maude Dikobe holds a PhD in African Diaspora Studies from U.C Berkeley, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, with a focus on Performance and Gender Studies. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Botswana where she teaches courses on literature and the expressive arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. In addition, she teaches a general elective, “GEC 268 Literature of Liberation” which looks at prison writing in Africa and the African Diaspora. She is an educator, researcher and consultant on cultural and creative industries in Africa, and is a member of the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa (OCPA) based in Mozambique. She wields, more than twenty years of higher education research and teaching in various places such as; the U.S. , Germany, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, and Trinidad and Tobago. Recently, she was appointed to revive the University of Botswana Travelling Theatre, a theatre group which she co-founded with Dr. Victor Mntubani and other fellow students as an undergraduate student at the University of Botswana in the mid- 80’s. In addition, she is co-founder and artistic director of Reetsanang Community Theatre, which she established with some of her friends upon graduating from the University of Botswana. She has carried out consultancy for ACP/EU project on the survey looking at the contribution of the creative and cultural industries to the economy of Botswana, as a national researcher. In 2009, she was an invited speaker at the World Summit on Arts and Culture. She is author of one book, Doing She Own Thing: Gender, Subversion and Performance in Trinidadian Calypso” (2009), book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on different topics relating to the arts.

Ruth Simbao

Professor of Art History and Visual Culture in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University, South Africa

DR RUTH SIMBAO is a Professor of Art History and Visual Culture in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University and NRF SARChI Chair of the research initiative "Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa". Her research interests include contemporary art with a particular focus on Africa, the geopolitics of art and society, geopolitics in relation to biennialisation, ‘strategic southernness’ and the Global South, theories of ‘place’, contra-flow diasporas, cosmopolitanism and cosmolocalism, redefinitions of ‘the local’, the power of small spaces and modest gestures, artists’ responses to xenophobia, China-Africa relations and the arts, contemporary cultural festivals and globalisation, performance theory and live art, the performance of heritage in Zambia, and site-situational art.

Simbao received her PhD from Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture in 2008, and was an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) postdoctoral fellow as part of the Humanities in Africa programme in 2010. In 2002 she received a Harvard University Teaching Award as a Teaching Fellow, and was the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award at Rhodes University in 2009.