Professor's mission to inspire Africans

An Lancashire academic is spearheading a new project which aims to inspire a South African writing community to explore the ideals of '¨freedom.
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, Professor Graham MortLANCASTER UNIVERSITY, Professor Graham Mort
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, Professor Graham Mort

Prof Graham Mort, lecturer at Lancaster University’s English and Creative Writing Department, travelled to the University of the Western Cape on a Leverhulme International Fellowship.

He has also been working with the South African institution’s creative writing programme to develop a range of postgraduate courses.

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Prof Mort’s ‘Taking Liberties’ writing project, which explores personal, social and political liberty through creative writing practice, originated in Uganda in 2001 and has continued through subsequent writing and radio projects in Africa and 
Kurdistan.

He said: “At its heart is the relationship between the political concept of liberty and our sense of personal freedom.”

The project is based at UWC, an institution with a linguistically and culturally diverse community of students, who are from a generation of first-time university students, following the dismantling of apartheid.

In 2017, Lancaster University and UWC staged the ‘Writing for Liberty’ conference in Cape Town, which brought together writers, theorists and critics to share their understanding of how authors have confronted oppression and contributed to human liberty.

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Prof Mort said: “ Our debates were often hard-fought, reaching down into an historical sense of partition and powerlessness.”

“My project will build upon that legacy, engaging with students at UWC and building on my earlier multilingual work there in Xhosa, Afrikaans and English.

“We’ll build a new website, featuring the writing of students and staff members, and acting as a showcase and resource for other researchers and teachers.”