STIAS announces second cohort for 2025
STIAS is thrilled to announce the commencement of the second semester of 2025 and the arrival of the latest cohort of Fellows. The semester starts on 14 July 2025 with the arrival of Fellows, Visiting Scholars and Artists-in-residence, with an official Welcome and Orientation gathering on 16 July.
The cohort will be the first users of the much-expanded facilities which comprise additional seminar rooms, additional Fellows’ offices and expanded dining and commons areas.
The cohort of 39 members - the largest so far since the fellowship programme began - includes leading scholars from across the globe in disciplines ranging from Philosophy of Science, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, to Political Science, History, Religion, Gender Studies and Public Health to mention just a few. The cohort also includes two Artists-in-Residence who will work on book projects.
The cohort can look forward to a packed programme of seminars, three public lectures, inclusion in workshops and meetings hosted by STIAS, as well as many other personal and collective highlights during their stay, most of which the Fellows themselves cause!
“A highlight of the semester will be our fifth Nobel in Africa Nobel Symposium in November,” said STIAS Director Edward K. Kirumira. “This year’s Nobel Symposium is on Literature, with the theme Retrieving Pasts, Imagining Futures: Creative Forms in African Writing.” (For more details see https://stias.ac.za/events/nobel-symposium-in-literature.)
In 2022 STIAS became the only institute outside of Europe to host Nobel Symposia that have been held since 1965.
“STIAS has internationally positioned itself as a Creative Space for the Mind,” added Kirumira, “and, since December 2018, is the only southern hemisphere member of the consortium of Some Institutes for Advanced Study (SIAS) which includes 10 institutes organised on the same principles as the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.”
“We are delighted and enthusiastic to greet the latest cohort and to be exposed to the fascinating new knowledge and insights their work delivers.”
STIAS cohort second semester 2025
Lewis Abedi Asante
Department of Estate Management
Kumasi Technical University
Project: Wetland gentrification in African cities: Implications for urban governance, planning, and theory
Jacek Banasiak
Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
University of Pretoria
Project: Metapopulation modelling of disease spread in the context of war and other natural disasters
Ishmael Beah
Artist-in-Residence
Sierra Leone
Project: Beware of Bad Dogs, A Novel
Lennart Bergström
Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry
Stockholm University
Project: Upcycling of textile waste
Robert Berwick
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Project: Out of Africa: Human Generative Creativity and the Origins of Language
Hilde Bras
Department of History
University of Groningen
Project: Reproductive Legacies: Missionary Medicine and Demographic Change in Southeast Africa, 1890–Present
Jennifer Case
Department of Engineering Education
Virginia Tech
Project: From first-generation students to the second: An inter-generational study of post-apartheid South African higher education
Rick De Villiers
Department of English
University of the Free State
Project: Ctrl Z: Undoing Narratives
Sarah Godsell
Curriculum and Social Studies, Wits School of Education
University of the Witwatersrand
Project: Historical Feeling: Exploring the Decolonisation of History Education
Amanda Gouws
Department of Political Science
Stellenbosch University
Project: Gender in Turbulent Times: Sexual Violence, Bare Life and Necropolitics
Amanda Hammar
Centre of African Studies
University of Copenhagen
Project: Speaking Through Houses: Property and Personhood in Zimbabwe’s Urban Margins
Sharief Hendricks
Faculty of Health Science
University of Cape Town
Project: A two-prong approach – preventing head injury in rugby through law changes and effective tackle training.
Hans Hertz
Department of Applied Physics
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Project: Clinical high-resolution phase-contrast x-ray medical imaging
Carlos Ibáñez
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
Project: Understanding Alzheimer’s Disease: Basic mechanisms and clinical developments
Göran Karlsson
Division of Molecular Hematology
Lund University
Project: Generation of a Chronic Myeloid Leukemia single-cell genomic atlas
Bridget Kenny
School of Social Sciences
University of Witwatersrand
Project: Lift Stories: The intimate publics of elevators in 20th century Johannesburg
Malgorzata Kotulska
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Wroclaw University of Science and Technology
Project: Susceptibility to amyloid-related neurodegenerative diseases evoked by functional amyloid proteins of the gut microbiome – a comparative study of European and African populations
Lou-Marié Kruger
Department of Psychology
Stellenbosch University
Project: Decolonisation and affective worlds: On the worldmaking potential of shame and rage in the South African “post”-apartheid present
Josefin Larsson
Department of Physics
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Project: A three-dimensional view of exploding stars
Baz Lecocq
Institute for Asian and African Studies
Humboldt University of Berlin
Project: Civil Aviation in East Africa 1946-1986 - Outline of a History
Siphokazi Magadla
Department of Political and International Studies
Rhodes University
Project: “S'obashaya Ngamatye”: Women and Sixty Years of the Armed Struggle in South Africa
Athambile Masola
Historical Studies Department
University of Cape Town
Project: Ukuhamba kukubona (to travel is to see): a feminist exploration of the intellectual legacies of black women's mobilities
Truphena E Mukuna
Organization for Social Science in Eastern and Southern Africa-OSSREA
Project: Towards re-conceptualization of socio-cultural climate change maladaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Victoria Namuggala
School of Women and Gender Studies
Makerere University
Project: Identity and Belonging: Teenage Parenthood in Kampala’s Informal Settlements
Siphiwe Ndlovu
Artist-in-Residence
Zimbabwe
Project: The Days Lived in Yellow
Mduduzi Ndlovu
School of Biology and Environmental Sciences
University of Mpumalanga
Project: Avian malaria and flavivirus prevalence in the savanna regions of South Africa
David Niyukuri
Department of Mathematics
University of Burundi
Project: Understanding the effects of malaria parasites and vector biomolecular dynamics on malaria transmission through multiscale modelling and agent-based models
Tommy Olsson
Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine
Umeå University
Project: Omics Approach for Personalized Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus for African and European Populations (OPTIMA)
Sanya Osha
Institute for Humanities in Africa
University of Cape Town
Project: Paulin Hountondji: The Last of the Titans
Wambongo C S Recha
Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies
Bomet University College
Project: Towards re-conceptualization of socio-cultural climate change maladaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo
Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science
University of the Basque Country
Project: Life: autonomy in evolution
Daniella Rylander Ottosson
Regenerative Neurophysiology Research Group
Lund University
Project: Cell reprogramming for a greater understanding of – and potential brain repair for mental disorders
Arghya Sengupta
Research Director
Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy
Project: The New Internationalist - The Life and Times of Radhabinod Pal
Tamara Shefer
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
University of the Western Cape
Project: Decolonisation and affective worlds: On the worldmaking potential of shame and rage in the South African “post”-apartheid present
Christopher Shisanya
Department of Geography
Kenyatta University
Project: Towards re-conceptualisation of socio-cultural climate change maladaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Benjamin Soares
Department of Religion
University of Florida
Project: Dogon Muslims, “Pagan” Saints, and Other Seeming Oxymorons in West Africa
Helene Strauss
Department of English
University of the Free State
Project: Phytospheric Justice
Myriam Vermeerbergen
Faculty of Arts
KU Leuven
Project: Signs on stage: Translating theatre into a sign language
Issouf Zerbo
Department of Plant Production and Agronomy
University Center of Tenkodogo, Thomas Sankara University
Project: Impact of climate change and land use on the conservation of Pterocarpus species in Burkina Faso