Postdoc im Projekt Inherited Futures
Rheinsprung 21
4051 Basel
Schweiz
Julia Rensing is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. In her current research as part of the project “Inherited Futures? Objects, Time, Knowledge” she explores how material objects such as archival letters and photographs preserve and transport knowledges and how their meanings transform through circulation processes. She is also interested in the more abstract and immaterial dimensions of inheriting, which figure, for example, in inherited injustices and the archival formations of this. In her book “Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art” Rensing engages more deeply with discourses on archives as sites of knowledge production and contestation. The book focuses on the role of photographic archives and explores how contemporary authors and artists from Namibia use photography as a way to make sense of the country’s complex colonial history. More broadly, Rensing is interested in how artistic practices shape discourses on (de)coloniality, inheritance, memory and imagined futures. She is also a member of the initiative Freiburg-Postkolonial, a research and educative project which promotes public debates about the colonial legacies of Freiburg and beyond.