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Patricia Hayes (historian)

Patricia Hayes is a professor of the University of the Western Cape who focuses on various subjects tied to colonial photography. She has done work on colonial Namibian history and is currently researching political and documentary photography in South Africa while teaching African History, Gender and History, and Visual History.

Personal life

Hayes was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She received her PhD from Cambridge University in 1992 with her work on the colonisation of northern Namibia and southern Angola. She worked briefly in the United States in 1992 and 1993 and has held fellowships in the UK, USA, and Brazil. She is now working in the History Department at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She has been awarded the Vice Chancellor's Teaching Award there.

Scholarly work

Hayes guest edited journal issues on visuality and gender in African history, such as Kronos: South African Histories in 2000 and 2025 and Gender & History in 2006. Her recent research has dealt with photography and history in South Africa, especially under the apartheid period about which she has contributed to such journals as African Studies Review, Journal of Southern African Studies, African Affairs, , Cultural Critique, History and Theory, and photographies. She is currently running the Visual History research project at the University of Western Cape. This project focuses on Southern African documentary photography. The Colonizing Camera was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 1998 when it was published.

Works

The Colonizing Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History is a book that Hayes helped write on colonisation within Southern Africa.

Bush of Ghosts is a photographic narrative that uses co-author John Liebenberg's photos, taken between 1986 and 1990, of the Border War between South Africa and Namibia. Hayes provides contextualizing essays to the photos and comments between herself and John Liebenberg about the war.

Publications

List of Publications:

See also

References