Katie Carline (ABD, 2023) has been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive two-year postdoctoral fellowship by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Beginning in August 2023, Katie will be based in the Department of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She will be developing a new project using oral history and written sources to understand the role of Black South African churches during violent conflict in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy.
This research will take Carline back to Buffalo City Municipality, in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, where she conducted her doctoral research under the guidance of Prof. Peter Alegi. By examining histories of everyday religious practice (prayer meetings, church services, funerals), this project seeks to understand the diverse, sometimes conflicting, ways that local religious communities tried to redefine South Africa during the transition from apartheid to democracy.