Professor Lize Kriel is an Associate Professor in Visual Culture Studies (History) at the University of Pretoria (UP). She completed her undergraduate studies at UP in what was then the Department of History and Cultural History. Her other major was Afrikaans, which was an intensive course in grammar and comparative literature. In addition, two years of Biblical Studies introduced her to the world of textual criticism, which she says turned out to be excellent preparation for the historical research that she conducted much later in the archives of various Christian communities.

Prof Kriel went to university with the intention of becoming a teacher, a profession that runs in the family. When she left school, she had only a vague idea about the ways in which knowledge is created. “It has fascinated me ever since,” she says. “I learnt that the synergy between teaching and research is exhilarating. I had exceptional lecturers who gave me many opportunities, for which I am very grateful.”

She says she hopes that being involved in research will constantly remind her of how complicated things are, how many sides there are to a story and how easy it is to look without seeing. “It should humble us to be eager to listen and slower to judge.”

Within her academic discipline, Prof Kriel is leading a project called ‘African au-o-ral art in image-text objects: cultural translation of precolonial memories and remains’. This research project, which is funded by the National Institute for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NIHSS), was inspired by previous collaborations and by new partners, such as School of the Arts postdoctoral fellow Dr Laura de Harde, who has done research on rock art documentation. Another inspiration for Prof Kriel is Sikho Siyotula, who is completing her PhD. She is doing a joint degree at UP and the University of Potsdam.

Remains from the past and how to make sense of them is a prominent theme in Prof Kriel’s work. “Along with the other members of our interdisciplinary team, we are trying to find ways of making sense of what had been captured about precolonial South African culture by missionaries and other ethnographers in image and text,” she explains.

“Our project includes partners in Germany, Togo, Kenya and South Africa. We have a common interest in images and their history. While my students and I work in the School of Arts, several of the other partners work in departments of language and literature, and in religious studies.”

She is part of an international cross-faculty research training group called the Minor Cosmopolitanisms, which is anchored at the University of Potsdam. The group’s interdisciplinary research is one of its strengths. Previously, Prof Kriel was hosted by the Faculty of Theology at Humboldt University in Berlin, and prior to that, she was a fellow at Leipzig University’s Institute for African Studies. At UP, she collaborates with colleagues in theology, education and publishing.

Prof Kriel counts her part in the 2015 publication of a tome on translated and annotated texts of Northern Sotho-speaking people – of what is Limpopo today, especially the area east of present-day Polokwane – as a highlight. Historically, the texts were co-created by Berlin missionary Carl Hoffmann and interlocutors from the Mamabolo and Mamatola communities. The contemporary project leader was Dr Annekie Joubert of Humboldt University. Although these rich texts are now available in English and modern Sepedi, their meaning and implications have not yet been fathomed.

Several students have started working on aspects of this ethnographic collection. Matete Phala and Nkami Manyike have completed their MA degrees, and a student from Leipzig, Annika Vosseler, is about to submit her PhD. “We hope to publish a book on our findings in 2022,” Prof Kriel says. “There will also be chapters by Annekie Joubert, Sam Moifatswane, Barry Morton, Margrit Schulze and Kokou Azamede. I am dreaming of a beautiful book with visual evidence that enhances the argument every step of the way. That is the joy of working in the School of Arts. There are generous experts who know how to make books and take pictures, often also pictures of pictures. Artist and colleague Carla Crafford is assisting me with this part of the research.”

Prof Kriel says there were many inspiring people on her research path. At school there were teachers, then lecturers in history, biblical studies and Afrikaans. Her research inspiration really began, she says, when lecturer Karina Sevenhuysen taught her how to approach an assignment in her first year. “I also owe a lot to the supervisors of my doctoral study, Professors Johan Bergh and Cobus Ferreira. I would also like to mention Fred Morton of the University of Botswana, Adam Jones in Leipzig, Dishon Kweya in Nakuru, Kenya, and more recently John Wright.

“Closer to home, I am incredibly lucky that my partner of the past 20-plus years is an always-there soulmate. He reads more broadly and deeply than I can imagine; never tires of conversations about the things that interest me, buys me books and filters social media for me. He challenges me a lot and gives me many ideas. However, he is a lousy assistant in the archives, because he is intrigued by everything and digresses from the topics that I would like him to pursue for me!”

She describes Isabel Hofmeyr’s book We Change Our Years as a Tale That is Told as an eye-opener academically; this is followed by The Portable Bunyan, also by Hofmeyr. Prof Kriel says she remains enthralled by what she has learnt from those books. Hlonipha Mokoena, author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual, is another writer she admires. “There are stories of such intellectuals in the Berlin Mission archives and we are slowly excavating them in our NIHSS project.”

Prof Kriel says she is indebted to Annekie Joubert of Humboldt University whom she regards as a mentor. She took the professor along on her first field trip and encouraged her to apply for an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. “She made me take on responsibilities in her research projects that I would never have had the courage to do on my own,” Prof Kriel says. “She taught me how to apply for funding and how to manage a project. She made me think about the possibilities of other media, like exhibitions, films and web-based databases. She even got me to appear in one of her documentary films; she guided me into visual research. Her book The Power of Performance, published in 2004, was way ahead of its time, and is still exemplary for the way it accounts for knowledge transfer as a multi-sensory endeavour and experience.”

In her academic work, Prof Kriel hopes to contribute to the multi-perspectival bigger picture. “I am an admirer of global perspectives on the past, as much as I am, as a researcher, a splitter rather than a lumper.” Yet, she would like to believe that the small “cameos” she makes contribute to the bigger picture.

Why does her research matter? “Perhaps it does not matter,” she says. “Perhaps it is the pursuit that matters; to be prepared, to be surprised by past ways of seeing.”

Prof Kriel’s advice to school learners or undergraduates who are interested in her field is to read.