Keynote Speakers

Nomusa Makhubu is a Professor in Art History at the University of Cape Town.

She is the founder of Creative Knowledge Resources (CKR) – a open access platform for social justice arts.
Makhubu was the Deputy Dean for Transformation in Humanities Faculty at UCT University (2020-2022).

She was the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award in 2006
and the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy in 2014.

She received the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) African Humanities Program fellowship award
and was selected to be an African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential fellow in 2016.

In 2017, she was a UCT-Harvard Mandela fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African
and African American Research, Harvard University.

In 2017 and in 2023, she was the First Runner Up for the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Women in Science Awards.

Makhubu has co-curated exhibitions (including a co-curation of the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy),
and she has published Creative Books and research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and book volumes.

Peju Layiwola, is an art Historian and visual artist from Nigeria who works in a variety of media and genre.

She is listed as a "21st Century Avant-Garde" in the book Art Cities of the Future published by Phaidon Press.

She is currently a Professor of Art and Art history at the University of Lagos and has been described as a "multi-talented artist."

Her works can be found in the collection of Microsoft Lagos, Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Pan Atlantic, Lagos
and homes of private collectors such as JP and Ebun Clark and the Obi of Onitsha.

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Jamaican scholar, international speaker and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies
at the University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Mona Campus where she has served in such positions as Director, Institute of Caribbean Studies (2015-2021) and Deputy Dean, Marketing and Resource Mobilisation (2022-2024).

She is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular culture, and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly.

She holds international appointments as member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project, UNESCO (since 2017), Senior Research Associate (honorary), Rhodes University, and Advisor, International Cultural Diversity Organisation.

She also serves as a board member of the Glasgow Caribbean Centre for Development Research at The UWI, Cave Hill Campus.

She is the author of numerous publications, among them, the acclaimed Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010), and editor of Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (2020) among others. Her research and opinions have appeared in various media, among them The Guardian, BBC, The Washington Post, NPR, The Fader and Pop Matters. More recently, her commentary can be viewed in documentary film series such as Samuel L. Jackson's Enslaved and Move (Netflix).

In 2019 she introduced the Sound Culture book series at The UWI Press which is dedicated to publishing original work on Caribbean music. Dr. Stanley Niaah now spends personal and academic time advancing the study of culture, music and reparatory justice at various levels.

She was a team member in the development of the double masters degree programme in Reparatory Justice (UWI and University of Glasgow), and her academic work has incorporated concerns around entertainment prohibition and reparatory justice.