Witnessing and Witness-Bearing
What does it mean to bear witness in a time of relentless violence, when images of cruelty saturate our screens, and acts of public witnessing often deepen polarisation rather than foster compassion? The Witnessing and Bearing Witness series emerges from this growing urgency: not only to confront unfolding global atrocities, but to interrogate what it means to witness in a world where violence is both spectacular and ordinary. Conceptualised as a lead-up to the AVReQ 2026 Conference: Bearing Witness, this series of conversations, lectures, and reflective dialogues invites scholars, artists, practitioners, and the broader public into a sustained inquiry. At its core is the question: what remains of the ethical power of witnessing, and how might this witnessing call us into being, into action, and into redefinition?
Past Seminars
German Colonial Violence in Central Tanzania: Engaging the Afterlives
The seminar German Colonial Violence in Central Tanzania: Engaging the Afterlives of History formed part of AVReQ’s Bearing Witness series, interrogating practices of memory, museology, and the ethics of bearing witness. Facilitated by Dr [...]
Holocaust Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Temporality, Ethics and Memory Politics
AVReQs recently hosted Dr Katrin Antweiler as part of the Bearing Witness seminar series. Dr Antweiler is a German scholar whose research examines Holocaust memorialisation and its intersections with human rights discourse. The event, [...]
What Would Hannah Arendt Have Said? A Conversation on Thought, Ethics, and Repair
We had the honour of hosting Professor Jacqueline Rose and welcoming Professor Vasti Roodt, the newly appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, to a conversation that wrestled with the emotional, [...]
Bearing Witness to Atrocities: A Conversation with Jacqueline Rose
In a time of relentless violence, what does it mean to bear witness? This was the central question explored in a compelling conversation between Prof Jacqueline Rose and Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. Their discussion, rooted [...]
Witnessing and Witness-Bearing: A Reflective Conversation
The panel discussion, moderated by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, brought together an esteemed group of scholars and practitioners to explore the layered dimensions of witnessing and witness-bearing. The conversation unfolded with a deep interrogation of [...]