TCNJ

31 WINTER 2026 Ebony Riley '26, an "astute, thoughtful student" who had excelled in Jaksch's research methods course. Riley accepted, and then the duo set out to piece it all together. "It's a bit messy," Jaksch says, "but this is the story." JAKSCH MET ÁNGEL DAVID NIEVES (the collector of the archives now in Jaksch's possession) two decades ago. She was conducting research on women's and girls' contributions to the struggle for liberation in the East African nation of Tanzania, and Nieves was a professor of Africana studies at Hamilton College in New York. The two became academic collaborators and fast friends. Throughout his research, Nieves had collected items that challenged the conventional narrative of equity and social justice in South Africa, and he had sought to make the materials accessible in a tangible and meaningful way. "He was really pushing at the vanguard of the digital humanities," Jaksch says, referring to Nieves' dedication to digitally preserving materials and analyzing their historical importance. When Nieves died in December 2023, he left behind a large collection of artifacts from his travels, including many objects that represented the Soweto uprisings of 1976, where South African police opened fire on Black student protesters. He had intended to create a multi-modal archive that would tell the history of South Africa's townships — the segregated communi- ties into which Black residents were forced during Apartheid, the system of

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