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Belonging to the Difficult Past: History education and human flourishing among Coloured youth in Johannesburg
Abstract
Is knowing one’s history important for human flourishing? In this paper I explore how Coloured history students in Johannesburg think about their identity and place in South Africa, and how this is impacted by the absence of any Coloured history in the South African history curriculum.
Following 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Coloured school, I suggest that students interpreted the absence of Coloured history as evidence of national exclusion, while simultaneously developing historical identities that relied on narratives of abandonment, gang affiliation and sexual violence.
However, this paper also explores how exposure to Coloured anti-apartheid activists over the course of 8 months began to transform ideas of what it meant to be Coloured among history students.
Biography
Dr Natasha Robinson is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Her research is interested in the ways that history education informs processes of transitional justice, particularly among post-post conflict generations. She has consulted for the OECD on the development of the PISA “Global Competencies” framework, and currently advises UNESCO on the “Addressing violent pasts through education” project.
Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
Date:
19 January 2026, 12:45
Venue:
Seminar Room, Department of Sociology and Online
Speaker:
Dr Natasha Robinson (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Sociology
Organiser contact email address:
comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Sociology Department Weekly Seminar
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Laurel Millen-Quinn
