Julia Rensing
Postdoc in the research project Inherited Futures
Postdoc in the research project Inherited Futures
Rheinsprung 21
4051
Basel
Schweiz
Profile
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 on 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. For her PhD dissertation with the title “Troubling Archives: Namibian Auto/Biographical Accounts and Artistic Practices as Archival Interventions” Rensing engaged more deeply with discourses on archives as sites of knowledge production and contestation. Her thesis 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.