Participant Info

First Name
Kylie
Last Name
Thomas
Country
South Africa
State
Affiliation
Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam
Website URL
https://www.photographyandresistance.com
Keywords
apartheid, violence, war, transitional justice, photography, visual activism, resistance
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
https://www.niod.nl/en/staff/kylie-thomas
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a visual historian and interdisciplinary scholar. My work focuses on histories and theories of photography; South African history during and after apartheid; the Shoah, art and commemoration; the history of feminist, LGBTQ+ and anti-racist social movements (with a particular focus on Southern Africa);  transitional justice; and the history and significance of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

I currently work as a Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies in Amsterdam, where I also held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship (2019-2021).

Recent Publications

Books

Women and Photography in Africa: Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges. London: Routledge, 2020. Co-edited with Darren Newbury and Lorena Rizzo

Photography in and out of Africa: Iterations with Difference. London: Routledge, 2016. Co-edited with Louise Green.

Impossible Mourning: HIV/AIDS and Visuality after apartheid. New Jersey: Bucknell University Press and Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2014.

Articles

2021. “Digital Visual Activism: Photographic Digital Heritage and the Re-opening of the Unresolved Truth and Reconciliation Commission Cases in Post-apartheid South Africa” Photography and Culture, 2021, (297-318).

2021. “History of Photography in Apartheid South Africa.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

2020. “‘Bitter Emotion’: photography and transnational solidarity in Ireland and South Africa”, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2020 (1-19).

2018. “Remember Marikana: Violence and Visual Activism in South Africa post-apartheid”, special issue of ASAP/Journal, “Rules of Engagement: Art, Process, Protest”, 2018, 3:2, (401-422).

2018. “Exhuming apartheid: Photography, Disappearance and Return”, special issue of Cahiers d’étudesAfricaines on “Images contestées/images contestataires”, LVIII (2), 230, 2018, (429-454).

2018. “Returning History: Figuring Worlds: Helen Levitt, Jansje Wissema, the Burning Museum Collective and photographs of children in the streets of New York and Cape Town”, Critical Arts, special issue on vernacular photography, 32:1, (122-136).

2018. “‘Decolonization is Now’: Photography and Student-Social Movements in South Africa”, special issue “Photography and African Futures”, Visual Studies, 33:1, (98-110).

Media Coverage
Country Focus
South Africa
Expertise by Geography
Africa, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Genocide, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Human Rights, Race, Sexual Violence, Women, World War II