Robyn Murning

Robyn Murning is a PhD candidate and lecturer in the Department of History. Her research is situated in memory studies and generation studies, with a regional focus on post-apartheid South Africa. She is interested in how collective and inherited memories shape generational identities, particularly in contexts where historical experience and social classification do not neatly align.

Her doctoral project, provisionally titled “‘We feel the agony of apartheid, but we don’t know why’: Memory and identity of South Africa’s ‘born free’ generation,” examines how the memory and legacy of apartheid continue to shape South Africa’s first post-apartheid generation. Drawing on theories of memory, generationality, and identity, the project explores how “born free” identity is produced through both external attribution and lived experience, and how inherited histories are interpreted, contested, and negotiated by those positioned as having come of age after apartheid.

Robyn holds a BA in Historical Studies and English Language & Literature from the University of Cape Town, where she graduated with distinction in 2019. She completed her MA in Global History and International Relations at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2022, graduating cum laude.