Biography
Dr Sophia Olivia Sanan (PhD Sociology) is a lecturer and research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlives of Violence and the Reparative Quest, Stellenbosch University. She teaches Contextual Perspectives on Trauma Testimony with a focus on visuality, epistemology, and ethics in the Global South. She has published in academic and popular formats on African cultural policy, alternative museology, cultural discourses of Southern-ness, race, historical injustice, and visual culture. She has taught in the fields of visual history, cultural studies, sociology, and arts education. Adjacent to her academic work, she has developed and conducted various creative research projects in the Global South (working with UNESCO, HIVOS, Arterial Network, SACO, the Goethe Institut amongst others).
Current Research Project
Currently Sophia co-leads a research collective of heritage practitioners, activists and scholars from Africa, South Asia, and Europe, who explore ideas and practices of counter-archiving and the post-museum in urban contexts, co-creating experimental publications, travelling schools and public dialogues. In her writing projects, she is exploring relationships between the psychology of colonialism, art, intimacy and power.
Email: sophiaroso@gmail.com
Recent Publications
Journal articles
(June 2026) Sanan, S. 2026. Against a Globalised Modality: Conflictorium, Museum of Conflict, Ahmedabad, in Artists, Heritage, and the Anticipated Museum (ed) Jecu, M. Berlin: DeGruyter Verlag
Forthcoming: Sanan, S. 2026. From the settler colony to the neo-liberal city: Heritage, Afrophobia, and African Art in Cape Town in, Reimagining Heritage in South Africa: Public Culture and Transformation (eds) Jethro, D; Sitas, R; Daya, S. Routledge.
Sanan, S. O. 2025. Rock art at the Iziko Museums of South Africa and its settler colonial imprint. Settler Colonial Studies, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2025.2460858
‘We Need New Names: On Difficult Knowledge and Cultures of Care in Southern African University Museums’ – African Critical Inquiry Workshop Awardee 2025
Sanan. S. 2024. Art as commodity, art as philosophy, art as world-making: notes from a conversation with Kopano Ratele on African Art, Black Subjectivity and African Psychology. Herri Issue 10
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.