Biography
Sophia Olivia Sanan (nee Rosochacki) holds a master’s degree in Sociology (from the Universities of Freiburg, Germany; Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and the University of Cape Town, 2014) and a PhD in Sociology through the University of Cape Town (2024). Her doctoral dissertation investigated politics of identity, loss and heritage through a study of the African art collection at the Iziko South African National Gallery. She has a professional background in African cultural policy development, education and art related research and has taught university students in South Africa, Uganda, the USA, Brazil and India. Since late 2020, she has worked with 12 museums in Africa, South America and South Asia, exploring ideas and practices of museology from Southern perspectives. She publishes on themes related to museology in the Global South; race and arts education; race, inequality and visual culture.
Current Research Project
Dr Sanan’s PhD research (which interwove art history and sociology), pointed to the need to engage with deep roots of settler coloniality evident in the cultural archives of former colonial museums in South Africa, in order to chart out more relevant modes of museology guided by an ethic of reparation and care. At AVReQ, Dr Sanan will contribute to a research project that seeks to trace transgenerational constructions of racial practice and lived experiences of race in Higher Education Institutional contexts. She will work with material cultural archives (such as parts of the Stellenbosch University Museum collection), as well as creative visual methodologies (such as map-making and visual story-telling), to explore perceptions around contemporary racial and spatial inequality, (white) privilege, identity and belonging in and beyond the university campus.
Email: sophiaroso@gmail.com
Recent Publications
Journal articles
Sanan, S. (2023). Museum Futures Africa: Project Review. Museum Worlds Advances in Research, MW 23 edition, Vol 11, 2023
Sanan, S. (2021). Images, ideologies and ways of seeing beyond the pandemic. HAS Issue III. May 2021. https://humanitiesartsandsociety.org/magazine/images-ideologies-and-ways-of-seeing-beyond-the-pandemic/
Sanan, S; van Graan, M. (2015). Mind the Gaps: The Mobility of Artists and Related Cultural Professionals in a Globalised World, Chapter in Reshaping cultural policies: a decade promoting the diversity of cultural expressions for development. ISBN: 978-92-3-100136-9. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000242866
Costandius E; Blackie, M; Leibowitz, B; Nell, I; Malgas, R, Young, G and Rosochacki S.(2015). Stumbling Over the First Hurdle: Exploring Notions of Critical Citizenship. Chapter 31 (pp 545 – 558) in Barnet R, Davies, M. (eds) 2015. Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education. Palgrave and Macmillan.