Nelson Mandela Foundation Project Manager To Deliver Lecture at Pitt March 23

PITTSBURGH-Verne Harris, an archivist and project manager for the Centre of Memory at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, South Africa, will deliver a lecture at the University of Pittsburgh, titled "Reaching for Hospitality: Politics and Ethics in Record Making," at 4:30 p.m. March 23, Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, Schenley Drive, Oakland. This free event, held in conjunction with Pitt's Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, is part of the Pitt School of Information Sciences Policy, Ethics, and Accountability Lecture Series. A reception and book signing by Harris will precede the lecture.

Prior to joining the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Harris was the director of the South African History Archive, a part-time lecturer in the archives at the University of Witwatersrand's postgraduate program in heritage studies, and deputy director of South Africa's State Archives Service and postapartheid National Archives of South Africa from 1993 to 2001.

Harris is the author of Exploring Archives: An Introduction to Archival Ideas and Practice in South Africa (National Archives of South Africa, 2000), and is coeditor and contributing author of Refiguring the Archive (Springer, 2002) and A Prisoner in the Garden: Photos, Letters, and Notes from Nelson Mandela's 27 Years in Prison (Studio, 2006).

The Centre of Memory's main function is to provide ample "memory resources" in honor of Mandela and his work by amassing publications and lectures on Mandela into a virtual archive, dedicated to preserving and documenting Mandela's contributions.

For more information on the Harris lecture, contact Kelly Shaffer at 412-624-2677 or kshaffer@mail.sis.pitt.edu.

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