From its micro-campus in Johannesburg, JIAS offers writers and researchers space to develop new ideas and projects, free from the ordinary obligations of academic and professional life. As an institute for advanced study, JIAS is committed to cultivating ground-breaking research from across the Global South, incorporating the humanities, social sciences, arts and natural sciences.
After Extraction
Johannesburg, South Africa | 11 & 18 July 2025
The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) is pleased to support After Extraction, a research-based, collaborative initiative by Dr. Mpho Matsipa in partnership with Chimurenga, The Gathering, and other contributors. Rooted in the archive of African Mobilities, After Extraction explores the entangled legacies of extractivism through creative practice, environmental science, and indigenous knowledge systems.
This two-part programme features dialogues, performance lectures, and sonic interventions that consider the aesthetic and political possibilities of land-based practices, ancestral memory, and imagination. The Johannesburg edition includes contributions by Sammy Baloji (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Senzeni Marasela (South Africa), two artists whose practices respond to the violences of extraction through acts of cultural and ecological repair.
After Extraction unfolds across two events:
Umcimbi_Late
11 July 2025 | 12:00 – 20:30
The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember, 44 Stanley Rd, Johannesburg
Curated by Dr. Mpho Matsipa, in collaboration with Miliswa Ndziba and Kutlwano Rampele (The Gathering), Umcimbi_Late draws together an intergenerational community of Black feminist and non-binary artists, architects, farmers, and cultural practitioners.
Set within the Dialogues on Soil III series, this gathering reclaims the umcimbi—an isiXhosa word for both “event” and “that which gathers us”—as a method of communal witnessing, sonic transmission, and spatial care.
Featured contributors include:
Thelma Ndebele/Dormant Youth, Phumi Morare, Bongisa Msutu, Būjin, Lindokuhle Nkosi, Thuli Gamedze, Siwe Ntombela, Tamsin Mzozoyana, and others.
A live broadcast of the event will air via Chimurenga’s Pan African Space Station (PASS).
Dialogues on Soil III: Walking with Theodorah
18 July 2025 | 10:30 – 16:00
Senzeni Marasela Studio, Ellis House, Doornfontein, Johannesburg
This performance-lecture and studio session centres on the evolving figure of Theodorah in the work of Senzeni Marasela. Curated by Mpho Matsipa in conversation with Uhuru Phalafala, the event brings together poets, scholars, and artists to reflect on land, memory, and gendered displacement.
Participants include:
Senzeni Marasela, Mpho Matsipa, Victoria Collis-Buthelezi (Director of JIAS), Uhuru Phalafala, and The Gathering.
After Extraction is a collaboration between:
Chimurenga
The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS)
The Gathering – Salon
Supported by the Bartlett School of Architecture Incubator Fund, JIAS, and the Graham Foundation.
Coming Up:
Dialogues on Soil IV with Sammy Baloji
1 October 2025 | 18:00 | Online
JIAS Creative Writing Workshop for Emerging Writers
Applications Now Open | Deadline: 30 July 2025
The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) invites applications for the 2025 Creative Writing Workshop—a six-week, fully funded residency for emerging African writers working in poetry and the short story.
Running from 15 September to 31 October 2025, the workshop will host six writers at our micro-campus in Johannesburg. Travel, accommodation, and a stipend are included.
Facilitated by acclaimed poet, short story writer, and anthologist Makhosazana Xaba, the programme supports creative growth through collective dialogue, close reading, and experimentation. Participants will write, read, and reflect across genres, guided by this year’s theme: Exploring the Ordinary in Our Lives
Each week introduces sub-themes that draw on memory, imagination, and research—expanding craft through mentorship and peer exchange.
Rooted in care, critique, and creative freedom, the JIAS Creative Writing Workshop offers writers a space to think, experiment, and build lasting community across borders.
Learn more here: https://linktr.ee/JIAS_UJ
Contact us.
jiasinfo@uj.ac.za
+27 (0)11 559 7530
1 Tolip Street, Westdene
PO Box 524, Auckland Park, 2006,
Johannesburg, South Africa