Sean Field

I am fascinated by how people consciously and unconsciously narrate their life histories. My academic career has involved the practise and teaching of oral history methodology. My PhD (from University of Essex) was on the Windermere/Kensington community and apartheid forced displacements and was completed in 1996. I began work in the Department in 1997 as coordinator of the Western Cape Oral History Project, and I also served as Director of the Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) from 2001 to 2012.

I was a founder member of the Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA) and Vice-President of the International Oral History Association (IOHA) from 2008 to 2010. My current research involves: (post)colonial oral histories of violence, and debates about trauma theory, memory, and psychoanalysis. I am also interested in parenting styles of trauma survivors, and how the child’s sense of self is intersubjectively framed and anti-referential psychic trauma is constituted across generations

Research Interests and Areas of Supervision

• (Post)colonial oral histories of violence
• Trauma theory debates
• Intergenerational family dynamics and trauma
• African refugees
• The politics of memory and heritage.