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2026
A Continent Under House Arrest? Migration, Security, and Contested Sovereignties in the Sahara
Since the 2000s, the surveillance and coercion of individuals living in or travelling through the Sahara have been encouraged and implemented by international, European and African actors, often in blatant violation of international law.
An interdisciplinary international approach for sustainable and viable food production systems for Africa
This interdisciplinary fellowship investigates the theoretical and design foundations of aquaponics—a circular food-production system combining aquaculture and hydroponic plant cultivation within Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA).
Book on Statistical Demography
During the last decade, significant advances have been made in the area of statistical demography. In particular, new methodologies have been developed for probabilistic population projections.
Boosting AI-for-health in Africa and beyond: Filling the Health Technology Assessment gap
The use of Ar+ficial Intelligence (AI) for health is prolifera+ng globally at an incredible rate.
Breaking the ice: how integrating cryogenic Electron Microscopy can overcome historical scientific isolation and enable local pharmaceutical and vaccine Development in South Africa.
With the award of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three pioneers in cryogenic electron microscopy, the world was awakened to the cutting-edge technology of 'cryo-EM'.
Children’s Mental Health and Human Rights Amidst Conflict: How Agency and Activism Shape Psychological Resilience and Survival Skills
This project explores how children living in conflict zones respond to violence, displacement, and systemic injustice—not only as victims, but as active agents of survival and resistance.
Contracts in South African Family Law
South African law increasingly relies on contracts to resolve disputes between family members and to address new practices like surrogacy and open adoptions within the family environment.
Could sex of babies at birth be linked to female wage employment?
My research at STIAS uses a publicly available household data to explore the association between sex at birth and a mother’s wage employment status.
Degrees of becoming: Young women’s use of higher education as a symbolic resource in the making of selfhood
Transitions to adulthood are life-making projects—efforts to construct meaning and possibility even amid uncertainty.
Discipline of the Screen: Cinema and public order in South Africa
This project departs from the emergence of cinema in early 20th century South Africa, and its role in constituting a new public sphere around this form of leisure.
Discovering Gravitationally Lensed Supernovae with Machine Learning in the LSST Era
The next generation of wide-field sky surveys will transform time-domain astrophysics.
Division of labor, and the organization of work in the natural world
I am writing a book on division of labor in animal social groups, that also explores the broader question of how animal societies organize around work.
Epistemology and its discontents: Working as a psychologist in troubled times
This monograph project outlines the discipline of psychology’s complex relationship with human rights, acknowledging instances of complicity in injustice alongside its potential for liberation.
Establishing Criteria and Organizing guidelines for Advancing Standards in Biochar production and consumption using Renewable and Innovative Clean Alternatives
Biomass is the primary energy source for cooking and heating in many developing countries, including Ghana, where nearly 70% of the population rely on fuelwood, charcoal, animal droppings, and agricultural waste.
Ethnic Dilemma: The Politics of Inequality and Governance in Kenya
This project explores how ethnicity shapes governance and inequality in Kenya.
Euthanasia and Physician assisted suicide (PAS) from a regulatory perspective
This research proposal focuses on the regulation of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS), adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines legal—i.e., constitutional and criminal—analysis with empirical insights from the field of public governance and regulatory governance.
Generative AI to Strengthen Global Health Security
Infectious disease threats to individual and public health are numerous, varied and frequently unexpected.
Global fertility industry and the Future of Humanity
With the expansion of reproductive technologies, the making of a baby has become an enterprise with a market for any, and all, related services.
Hope in times of polycrisis: the role of local African initiatives in driving a just and sustainable future
The unprecedented impact and pace of current environmental change calls for visions that counteract the dominant dystopian discourse and provide realistic examples of transformative changes that contribute to a better world, such as the already growing number of new initiatives, projects, practices…
Insights from the biology of the Cape honey bee: understanding nuances of social relations in social insects
The unfolding appreciation of the effects of the parthenogenetic production of female eggs from laying workers of Cape honey bee workers on social relationships in colonies has proved to be a rich source of ideas regarding the interplay between individual fitness and colony fitness.
Inspirational Fiction: Old Testament Exegesis with an Evangelical Agenda
The present project investigates the intersection between Inspirational Fiction and the Bible. Inspiration Fiction offers theology in an easily accessible and attractively packaged form.
Integration of structure/function predictions into the CERI emerging threat genomic surveillance pipeline
The Centre for Epidemiology Research and Innovation collects high-precision and timely data on emerging health threats by carrying out a world-class genomic surveillance effort.
Knowledge, Power, and Policy: Constructing a Political Economy of Innovation and Research in Post-Apartheid South Africa
South Africa has long been a leader in scientific research and innovation on the African continent.
Landscaping the Cape: “improvement”, the politics of visibility & the heritage e/affects of socio-ecological commoning, 1872 – 1948
This project builds on scholarship about landscape and memory in Cape Town by looking at how “nature” historically structured the material making of the cityscape, and the racially-heterogenous socio-natural commons that emerged in the city during the 20th century.
Let’s Play for Power: Gamifying Urban Transformation in African Cities
Cities Imagine if transforming African cities was not just about navigating complex challenges but about unlocking collective imagination.
Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Transnational Solidarity
This project, the first book-length scholarly biography of legendary South African performer and political activist Miriam Makeba, chronicles Makeba’s life, her musical career, and her crucial role in the international anti-apartheid and Black Power movements.
Navigating Challenge
For South Africa a series of domestic and international shocks reflect a breaking international order. South Africa, like most of the world, has seen its national status transformed over the 80 plus years of the post Second World War political system.
Oversight Intimacies: Police Violence and Reform in Kenya
This book project - Oversight Intimacies: Police Violence and Reform in Kenya - explores how police reform and accountability unfold in practice, focusing on Kenya as a critical site of analysis.
Politics of the Passport: History, Value, Object
In mapping the now indispensable document for international travel—the passport— the project excavates its complex modern manifestations. Its import may appear to be intuitive, but betrays a multifaceted undergirding that demands unpacking, meaningful articulation and theorising.
Private Law for Human Flourishing: Rethinking Justice in Everyday Relations by Integrating Vulnerability and Capabilities into Private Law Theory
Private law governs the everyday interactions between individuals and businesses—how we make agreements, resolve disputes, and secure basic goods.
Projection of Socioeconomic and Forced Migration for Probabilistic Population Projections
During the STIAS fellowship, I propose to work on issues that are vital for probabilistic population projections for all countries, notably the projection of international migration by age and sex, and the projection of refugee and other forced migration flows.
Regulation of programmed stop codon readthrough
My research lies within the Life Sciences, and is specialized around questions related to developmental biology, and how gene expression is regulated in normal and diseased contexts.
Remembering Deep Pasts for the Present: the Transformative Potential of Indigenous Memory Cultures in Australia and Globally
Australia is witnessing a surge of public works by Indigenous creatives across the arts that broadcast the message of ‘ever present’ and ‘always will be’.
Science and Technology in Indian Agriculture: History, Evolution and Emerging Challenges
This project is essentially a plan to write a book on the interrelationships between science, technology and agriculture in India, with specific reference to the challenges of sustainable development and climate change.
SLEEP: Minimalism And The Brain
This project explores intersections between minimalistic music and the neurobiology of sleep. The project draws its main inspiration from the piece SLEEP by post-minimalist composer Max Richter. SLEEP
Sounds of life
The title of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" equates life with sound, death with silence.
Spiritual Place-Making in Contemporary Gardens
This project explores the growing synergies between gardening and spirituality.
The Best Electoral system for South Africa?
South Africa has since 1994 used a two-tier compensatory member PR system for National Assembly elections. However, it has since the mid-nineties been discussed if the system needs amendment to enable it to deliver the kind of accountable parliament South Africa so direly needs.
The Killing of the Dogs
This story of organised around and imaginary organised dog killing in a South African township during the period of resistance to apartheid oppression.
The Power of Movement: Saharan perspectives on politics
Northwest Africa has recently been the site of a large variety of political movements.
This House Is Not for Sale
Current research explores land, home, and community in South Africa through a sociological lens.
Towards an Aegean Vision: exploring regional cultural identities beyond ethnonational divides
How are regional cultures formed beyond the confines of ethnonational borders? To what extent do identity-building processes depend on the shared environments and historical legacies within a geographical area?
Towards Robust Social-Ecological States: Comparative Lessons from Belgium, Switzerland and South Africa
How can institutions remain just, legitimate, and protective in an ecologically finite world?
Universalism and Humanism in the Kurdish and Tamil Women’s Freedom Movements
In the 21st century, concepts of humanity and universalism came under theoretical and political pressure.
Waterworlding: More-than-human and more-than-digital
Technology providers from around the world are currently marketing digital water meters to households or communities with the promise of using water more efficiently and distributing it more fairly in the face of increasingly scarce drinking water resources and simultaneous population growth.
What would it take to make a virtual microbiology lab?
Computational Biology offers a valuable complement to complex experimental approaches to study infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis.
Women Cabinet Ministers in West Africa: Insights from The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone
Across the world cabinet ministers are significant political players and yet they are grossly under researched, in part because of a dearth of consistent and comparable data.