Brenda Schmahmann

Brenda Schmahmann has been the SARChI chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the University of Johannesburg since January 2016, and has been a professor at the University of Johannesburg with a research focus since March 2013. She has three decades of academic experience. Previously Professor of Art History & Visual Culture and Head of Fine Art at Rhodes University, she was formerly a staff member in the History of Art Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. Active in research and professional bodies, she served an extended term as the visual arts expert on the National Research Foundation’s panel rating scholars in the Performing and Creative Arts, and was appointed to Chair, with the national Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), a Working Group to make recommendations about the principles and processes to be deployed to accredit and reward all forms of creative and non-conventional research. A council member (and former president) of the South African Visual Arts Association (SAVAH), she has a B2 rating from the NRF and was a winner of the Vice-Chancellor’s Book Award at Rhodes University, where she was also ranked amongst the institution’s top thirty most productive researchers,