DR ASHRAF JAMAL
BA Hons, School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton (UK); MA, Department of English, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada; PhD, School of Language, Culture and Communication, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.
Dr Jamal is a Johannesburg-based academic, writer and cultural theorist. He is on the advisory board of the Doha-based ARAK Collection of African Art.
Jamal is co-author (with Sue Williamson) of Art in South Africa: The Future Present (David Phillip, 1996) and co-editor (with Shanti Moorthy) of Indian Ocean Studies: Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives (Routlege, 2009). Jamal is also the author of Predicaments of culture in South Africa, Love themes for the wilderness (Unisa Press, 2015), and the award-winning collection of short stories, The Shades (Brevitas, 2002). Jamal’s latest books include In the World: Essays on Contemporary South African Art (SKIRA, 2018); Strange Cargo: Essays on Art (SKIRA, 2022); Looking into the mad eye of history without blinking (Mad Eye Books, 2024), and African Art: The Arak Collection (SKIRA, 2025).
Dr Jamal is the former editor of Art South Africa and Art Africa – he remains a contributor. Jamal is also a regular contributor to ArtThrob and has his own column – Man of Letters – in Art Times since 2019. Recent articles include The Arranger: Mongezi Ncaphayi (2022); Outside Open Time: Jan-Henri Booyens (2022); and Frans Thoka: Land as the Silent Witness in Monochrome (2024). Jamal has also worked as a playwright-director-producer and has twice won the Grahamstown Festival Fringe Award.
Dr Ashraf Jamal joined VIAD in 2017.
