Dr Geraldine Frieslaar

Geraldine Frieslaar is the Chief Archivist of the New Archival Visions Programme at the Centre for Humanities Research where her work includes collections management, research and teaching. Before her appointment at UWC, Geraldine served as the director of the South African History Archive. Frieslaar worked in various positions in the last 17 years across archives, museums and universities which included the District Six Museum, the Robben Island Museum, and Stellenbosch University. Through her work experience and academic research, Frieslaar cultivates an understanding of historic and systemic challenges facing archival and museological spaces and thus her research interests are around interventions that disrupt traditional modes of thinking and making these spaces more accessible, dialogical, participatory, and inclusive through archival activism, practice-based research and theory. Frieslaar co-authored Transformation of Archives and Heritage Education in post-apartheid South Africa which was published in 2023.