Leading scholar gives talk on Sharpeville massacre
A leading professor of Peace and Conflict studies visited Birkbeck to talk about the 1960...
Tom Lodge, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Limerick, and leading Apartheid scholar, visited Birkbeck on Friday 9 December, to talk about his research on the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.
Professor Lodge has written extensively on South African politics and his book, Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences, was published recently. In it, Professor Lodge offers a new account of the notorious massacre that sparked the beginning of armed resistance in South Africa. He uses eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the lead up to events and then examines the consequences of this pivotal event in South Africa’s politics both domestically and world-wide.
Professor Lodge and his colleague Dr Rachel Ibreck joined Professor Annie Coombes, from Birkbeck’s Department of History of Art and Screen Media, as part of an event organised in conjunction with the Centre for African Studies, University of London. They discussed the way that violent events in Southern, East and Central Africa are remembered and commemorated. These important discussions dealt with the way that the memory of past violence directly impacts upon contemporary politics.