Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Rebekah Lee

Academic qualifications

BA in History and Literature, Harvard University, 1995
MPhil in Economic and Social History, University of Oxford, 1999
DPhil in Economic and Social History, University of Oxford, 2002

Professional activities

Fellow of Royal Historical Society (UK), Member of African Studies Association (USA), African Studies Association (UK), Royal Africa Society (UK)

Teaching

First year
HT51022A A Cultural History of the Self: Representations and Identities

Second and third year
HT52076A Health, Healing and Illness in Africa
HT52082A Imagining Africa: Ideology, Identity and Text in Africa and the Diaspora
HT52083A Of Revelation and Revolution: A Social and Political History of 20th Century South Africa
HT53036A/B Gender and Urbanisation in Southern Africa (Special Subject)

MA
Islam and Christianity in Modern Africa

Areas of supervision

I would welcome research proposals on modern southern African social and cultural history; the history of African cities; African medical history; gender, migration and urbanisation in Africa; religion and identity, including the history of death in Africa; the history of the family in Africa and the diaspora.

Television and video output

Invited speaker, BBC World Service radio programme, on rising costs of funerals in Africa, 26 July 2007.

Research interests

My research concerns the social and cultural history of southern Africa. My interests include gender and migration, religion, health and healing, local-level associational life, space and the urban environment, commodity culture, family histories and strategies, and identity-formation. My most recent work was a generational history of African women in apartheid Cape Town, South Africa. Much of my research incorporates ethnographic methods, such as the use of oral sources and participant observation. I have been awarded a major AHRC research grant, to fund a collaborative project with Professor Megan Vaughan at the University of Cambridge, on the history of death in Africa from c.1800 to the present day. This project runs until 2012.

Grants and Awards

Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 2011-12
Co-investigator, 'Death in Africa: A history c.1800 to present day', Arts Humanities Research Council, Major Project Grant, 2006-12
Peake Learning and Teaching Award, Goldsmiths College, 2010
Wellcome Trust Small Grant, 2006-7
British Academy Conference Grant, 2005
University of London Central Research Fund Grant, 2005
Goldsmiths College Research Fund Grant, 2004

Editorial Work

Advisory Board, Journal of Southern African Studies (member of Editorial Board from September 2012)

Selected publications

Books and edited volumes

Co-editor, with Megan Vaughan, Special Issue on Death and Loss in Africa, African Studies, vol. 71, 2 (forthcoming 2012)

African Women and Apartheid: Migration and Settlement in Urban South Africa (I.B. Tauris: London, 2009)

Articles in refereed journals

'Death "on the move": Funerals, entrepreneurs and the rural-urban nexus in South Africa', Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 81, 2 (2011), pp. 226-47

‘Death and dying in the history of Africa since 1800’, with Megan Vaughan, Journal of African History, vol. 49 (2008), pp. 341-59

'Hearth and home in Cape Town: African women, energy resourcing, and consumption in an urban environment’, Journal of Women’s History, special issue on women, material culture and consumption (Dec 2006)

'Reconstructing "home" in apartheid Cape Town: African women and the process of settlement’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (Sept 2005), pp. 611-630

'Conversion or continuum?: the spread of Islam among African women in Cape Town', Social Dynamics, vol. 27, no. 2 (2001), pp. 62-85

Articles in edited collections

'Conversion and its consequences: Africans and Islam in Cape Town’, in P. Broadhead and D. Keown (eds) Can Faiths Make Peace?: Holy Wars and the Resolution of Religious Conflicts from Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (I.B. Tauris: London, 2006)

‘Vigilantism and popular justice after apartheid’, with Jeremy Seekings, in D. Feenan (ed.) Informal Criminal Justice (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2002), pp. 99-116

Selected contributions in Pyong Gap Min (ed.) Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, (Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 2004)

Conferences organised

Selected recent seminars and conference presentations

'Death "on the move": Funerals, Entrepreneurs and the Rural-Urban Nexus in South Africa', paper presented at Managing Uncertainty: Death and Loss in Africa conference, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 8-10 April 2010.

'New "ways of dying": Embalming and exhumation in contemporary South Africa', Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 3 March 2010.

'Mobility, migration and the changing management of death in South Africa', paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 19-22 November 2009.

'Death "on the move":  Funerals, Entrepreneurs and the Rural-Urban Nexus in South Africa', paper presented at Nordic Africa Days conference, University of Trondheim, Norway, 1-3 October 2009

'Mobility strategies, intergenerational relations and new histories of apartheid', paper presented at Gendered and Generational Strategies for Ageing in Africa, ASA-UK and Oxford Institute of Ageing, King's College, London, 14 September 2009

‘Mobility, migration and the changing management of death in South Africa’, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine Seminar, University of Oxford, 9 March 2009.

‘The new gold mine?:  buying and burying in contemporary South Africa’, paper presented at Death in African History:  An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Cambridge, 5-6 May 2007

‘The debt we cannot avoid’:  Researching the ‘funeral frenzy’ in contemporary South Africa’, Goldsmiths Anthropology Department Seminar, 22 November 2006

‘Generational gestures: rethinking gender and identity in African Studies’ paper presented at Women’s World 2005: 9th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Ewha University, Seoul, Korea, 19-24 June 2005

‘Mothers and daughters in trans-generational perspective: ‘moving’ memories from Cape Town, South Africa, 1950-2000’, paper presented at Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, Scripps College, Claremont, California, 2-5 June 2005

‘Comprehending conversion:  Islam and identity among Africans in Cape Town’, Centre for Southern African Studies Seminar, Sussex University, 1 December 2004

'Mobility matters: mothers, daughters and signifying difference among Africans in Cape Town, 1950-2000', Paper presented at the African Studies Association of the UK Biennial Conference, Goldsmiths College, London, 13-15 Sept 2004

'Conversion and its consequences: Africans and Islam in Cape Town, South Africa', Paper presented at the conference Can Faiths Make Peace? Holy Wars and the Settlement of Religious Conflicts From Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Goldsmiths College, London, 12-13 July 2004

'The debt we cannot avoid': African funerals and funeral finance in Cape Town, 1950-2000', Department of History Seminar, University of Cape Town, 29 April 2004

'Beloved unions?: A gendered and generational history of associational life in a South African city', paper presented at the European Social Science History Conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, 24-27 Mar 2004

'Beloved unions?: A gendered and generational history of associational life in a South African city', Townlife in Modern Africa Workshop, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 13 Mar 2004

'Generational perspectives and emergent identities: African women in Cape Town, 1950-2000', Paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, 29 Oct to 2 Nov 2003

'Reconstructing home in apartheid Cape Town: African women and the process of settlement', African History Seminar, School of Oriental and African Studies, 22 October 2003

‘Islam and changing African identities in South Africa:  A gendered and historical approach’, paper presented at Northeastern Workshop on Southern Africa, University of Vermont, 5-7 September 2003

'Management and meaning: generational mobility strategies of African women in apartheid Cape Town', African Studies Seminar, University of Oxford, 31 October 2002