Department of History of Art and Archaeology
Annwen E Bates
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Key information
Key information
- Department
- Department of History of Art and Archaeology
- Qualifications
- BA (UCT), BA Hons (UCT), MSt (Oxon)
- Subject
- History of Art and Archaeology
- Email address
- 657334@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- The Buchu Edit: Representations of Africa and residues of empire in the wellness and wellbeing industry with special reference to the Cape of Good Hope
- Internal Supervisors
- Dr Tania Tribe
Biography
Annwen Bates is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS. Her research investigates historical residues in visual representations of Traditional African Medicine within Britain’s contemporary wellness and wellbeing marketplace.
Focusing on the Cape of Good Hope as a regional case study, her thesis uses the COVID-19 “South African variant of concern” as a stress test for these representational tropes. She has presented her current research to the South African Discussion Group at the University of Oxford and at an international Health Humanities Consortium conference.
Annwen holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in European and Mediterranean Studies from the University of Cape Town (UCT), graduating with distinctions in both her major and English, as well as the degree overall. She also earned a BA Honours in Cultural Theory from UCT, awarded in the first class. During her Honours year, she was selected for an Education Abroad Programme scholarship to the University of California, San Diego. She later completed a Master of Studies (MSt) at the University of Oxford, supported by an Oppenheimer Tuition Scholarship and the JA Trust. Her MSt thesis was published as a journal article titled “Wearing the T-shirt: An exploration of the ideological underpinnings of visual representations of the African body with HIV or AIDS.” Subsequent research on Cape history, memory, and botanical gardens was presented at conferences of the Association of Cultural Studies and the South African Visual Arts Historians.
Previously, Annwen held a lectureship in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University (Grahamstown) and has guest lectured at UCT, the University of Chichester, and Bayes Business School, London. She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Assessment and Methodology, awarded with distinction.
Annwen is completing her PhD part-time while working as a Senior Philanthropy Manager at the Medical Research Foundation, the independent charitable foundation of the UK Medical Research Council.
