The Project
Anti-Apartheid London: Digital Map is a public history and education project that documents and shares the largely underrecognised history of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in London, thus supporting the teaching of African history in UK schools.
For more than 50 years, London was a central hub of global resistance to apartheid, hosting exiled South African activists and political movements, who – with the support of grassroots and civil society organisations – mobilised against the apartheid regime. The project will create an interactive digital map hosted on the Layers of London platform, bringing together over 50 historically significant sites linked to this anti-apartheid activism. Each site will include accessible, multimedia content such as short historical narratives, archival photographs and extracts from newly recorded oral histories.
The project is delivered through a close partnership between the University of Oxford and the Anti-Apartheid Legacy Centre (AALC), combining academic research with community knowledge and lived experience. It will support school teaching, public learning and community engagement by grounding global African and liberation histories in familiar local spaces. The digital map will be freely available online and supported by targeted dissemination to schools, educators, heritage organisations and the wider public.
