Dr. Rachel Baasch

Dr Rachel Baasch is an artist and an art historian with experience in Fine Art practice, transdisciplinary collaboration, visual and performing arts and research within the context of Africa and the global south. She was born in Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa in 1987 and holds a BFA, MFA (Fine Art) and PhD (Art History) from Rhodes University (RU). She is a Research Associate in the NRF SARChI Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa research team at RU. She has supervised Masters and PhD students and lectured in the Fine Art school at RU from 2017-20. Between 2021 and 2023 she worked as a painting and theory lecturer and the Acting Head of Department in Fine Art and Jewellery Design at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). She has facilitated workshops and consulted on arts-based research, practice-based research, and creative research methodologies at RU, Nelson Mandela University (NMU) and DUT. Her research has been published in the journals African Arts, Image and Text and De Arté. She is also a co-editor and contributor with Prof Stephen Foloranmi and Prof Ruth Simbao for the forthcoming book, Audacious Art Histories:grounding the arts of Africa.