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2017
Aid Effectiveness and Policy Coherence for Development: Donor Policies and Practices in Comparative Perspective
This research project explores the extent to which donor countries’ aid and non-aid policies work together in the interests of development, as well as the extent to which donors work with each other and recipient governments.
Comparative regionalism: The political economy of regional security organizations
After the end of the Cold War a respacing of international politics has begun – a new world order is emerging that is increasingly described as multipolar.
Dying to forget: History, memory and the intergenerational transfer of trauma in South Africa
THIS project is about the discipline of history and the intergenerational transfer of trauma in South Africa.
Jazz Life
This is a book in progress replete with personal incident and an appreciation of South African jazz history and culture, musicians and the music played.
PostAfricanism vs Fanonism
Although the current global age in its most crucial structural orientations, has turned viscerally anti-Fanonian, Fanon remains, especially among the intellectual left, a key intellectual and moral authority still sponsoring the seeming perpetuation of the anti-colonial/decolonial outlook not just in Africa but in the rest of the Third World.
Sealing the Female Body Before Marriage: Cultural Debates about Hymeneal Signs
This project asks how reflections on the female body part called the hymen or maidenhead in early modern English texts (produced from 1500-1700) can illuminate modern debates about the set of modern surgical practices called hymenoplasty.
Sex and Sexuality in Africa: A Brief History
Since at least the 1980s, historians of Africa have produced a rich and nuanced scholarship on sex and sexuality on the continent.
Springer Handbook of Water Resources Management
Water is a limited resource. Water and sanitation are human rights.
World Literature, Minor Languages, and the Art of Translation: The Example of Afrikaans
By examining a number of literary works which were published in both Afrikaans and English in the past 25 years in the context of recent studies of the question of translation and world literature, this project will attempt to answer such questions as: Does translation of literary works into major languages represent a danger for the future of minor languages?
2016
“Brighter Futures” through Health Promotion and Health Equity
There is robust evidence that health promotion in the school setting can increase children’s knowledge and change their choice of health related behaviors for the better.
“Historical geography’s contributions to understanding South Africa.”
Part of a larger study evaluating the contributions of historical geographers to understanding the settler colonies of the British Empire, the work at STIAS will focus on historical geography in South Africa, beginning with the work of NC Pollock and S Agnew (1963), and focusing in particular on the contributions of AJ Christopher, Professor Emeritus at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, who published a number of atlases, books, and articles on the development of the country and its human geography during the apartheid era.
“Sustainable Cities in South Africa: A Legal Appraisal”
The 11th of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals adopted on 25 September 2015 (the new sustainable development agenda), focuses on the pursuit of cities that are inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
“We Don’t Need Another Hero”
In a 2008, post-Polokwane missive to ANC president, Jacob Zuma, declaring his refusal to campaign for the African National Congress (ANC) in the upcoming 2009 general election, recently-deposed South African President Thabo Mbeki famously declared:… I find it strange in the extreme that today cadres of our movement attach the label of a cult of personality to me, and indeed publicly declare a determination to kill to defend your own cause, the personal interests of the personality, Jacob Zuma!
Alienation, protest and the idea of a manifesto
The principal aim of this period of writing and research is to complete a chapter from a short book, tentatively entitled Marx@Marikana: Reading Marx in South Africa today.
Assessing the potential impact of agriculture on the biogeochemistry of a pristine wetland, the Okavango Delta
The Okavango Delta, Botswana is a World Heritage Site and an international treasure.
Cannon’s cats and Freud’s dream metaphor insight carry the keys to much human thought (and action)
Sigmund Freud in 1899, reported that the dream metaphor often provides the key to understanding the psychological origin of emotional distress (‘neurosis’), and Walter Cannon in 1915 elucidated the body’s response to emotional stress in cats, called the ‘fight or flight response’.
Christianity, modernity and the politics of homosexuality in Africa
This project examines the complexity and multiplicity of Christian contributions to politics of homosexuality and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights in Africa.
Commemorating Painful Pasts through Performative Practices
The 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have left a dark legacy behind: world wars, genocides, civil wars, dictatorships and terrorist attacks with millions of people tortured, persecuted, displaced, dead, or disappeared without a trace.
Complexity and emergent properties in the spider’s webs and silks
Spider webs are superb examples of functional structures that emerge as the animal builds her web.
Constitution-building in Africa: Decentralisation and constitutionalism in Africa
Under the broad theme of constitution-building in Africa, the focus of this project will be on the issue of decentralisation and constitutionalism in Africa.
Contemporary law: the dialectic of unity and plurality
The simultaneous unity and plurality of law was a central topic for Hans Kelsen.
Critical Illegibility, Blackness and Scoring Dangerous Freedoms
My project examines the possibility of reconfiguring conventional literary analytic practice by crafting critical approaches which are less invested in rendering texts ‘transparent’ than in approximating, embracing and extending the transgressive energies and insights of creative texts.
Differentiated Access: Water, Citizenship and Politics
Global water policy highlights the need to extend affordable and safe water to underserved communities, in addition to fostering participatory water governance.
Distributed Renewable Economy for Africa’s Transformation
Human history over the millennia has been shaped by major social transformation processes.
DOHaD and SDGs: Moving towards Early Implementation
The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease & Sustainable Development Goals: Moving Towards Early ImplementationThe Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) paradigm provides us with a new and exciting way to think about causation of illness while at the same time providing us with both personal and population-level instruments for avoiding harm and promoting health.
Fiction Writing Project
I plan to write a novel based on the life and works of Thomas Pringle, popularly known as the Father of South African poetry.
Global Citizenship and the Practice of Being Human. South African Visions and the legacy of Enlightenment
This project addresses the idea of global citizenship and common humanity in South Africa today.
Infectious Disease Prevention in Companion Animals
The project aims at campaigning for the acceptance of companion animal vaccination and its disease prevention aspects, thereby increasing the visibility of veterinary research in the One Medicine-One Health perspective.
Japanese firms, industrial systems and investments in Africa
It is well recognised that there is growing economic and political interaction between sub-Saharan Africa and states from the East Asian region.
Low cost nudges to patients to improve treatment adherence: do they work?
Universal health coverage and the growing burden of chronic illness are both at the top of the global health agenda.
Making primary health care work for the poor
South Africa’s poor health outcomes have traditionally been attributed to poverty, unequal and ineffective spending and the high disease burden, but increasingly it is recognized that the public health system may also be contributing to such problems by delivering services that do not always conform to the stipulated standards.
Many Modernities ‐ Religious freedom in South Africa and Sweden
In Europe with a history of religious wars and big national churches, freedom of religion is often understood as freedom from, at least from institutional religion.
Mobilizing for Natural Resource Management at the Micro-level in Rural Africa
Natural resource management (NRM) involves efforts by different institutions to formulate and implement laws, policies and legislation to ensure viable use of natural resources.
Noiseless optical amplifiers and their applications
Optical amplifiers are essential in optical communication systems that serve as the backbone of the Internet.
Nutritional Security in a Profitable and Sustainable Food System
The South African Food system is designed to ensure that the country’s population is well-nourished, that farming is a viable livelihood and that the environment is protected.
Opposition in African Politics: The Case of Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya
This research examines the idea of opposition in African politics against the backdrop of problems inherent in the democratization process in contemporary Africa with a view to analyzing their dimensions and implications for the development of the continent and her peoples.
Promoting peace, security and development in Africa: challenges, and constraints to South Africa’s African Agenda
The purpose of this research project is to (further) explore aspects of South Africa’s African policy over the past two decades, specifically within the frameworks of its African Agenda and its white paper on foreign policy, The Diplomacy of Ubuntu.
Rethinking Sex in Uganda’s Parliament
How do parliaments think about sexualities, sexual citizenship, sexual rights and sexual norms over time and space within the African continent?
Swedish Naturalists in South Africa 1771–1851
The South African flora and fauna have been studied by a number of Swedish naturalists the last 250 years.
The Heartbeat of a Storm
After writing five novels, a collection of short stories and a musical, which largely drew from South Africas troubled past, I will use the period at STIAS to write a semi-autobiographical (or novelized) account of the use of technology or forensic science to make sense of our past and of our future.
The legitimacy and authority of international criminal law
This project is part of a longer-term research agenda, which interrogates the legitimacy and authority of international criminal law.
The right to have rights: from migration to integration
One of the key tasks of my stay at STIAS will be to work on a project that addresses the normative and institutional basis of what Hannah Arendt calls the right to have rights.
The use of shear wave elastography in patients with homozygous beta thalassemia
Patients with homozygous beta thalassemia have complex clinical complications due to the need for blood transfusions and iron overload.
Transcultural Affinity: Cosmopolitan Imagination in South Africa
My project examines the idea of cosmopolitan solidarity in South Africa.
We Don't Need Another Hero
In a 2008, post-Polokwane missive to ANC president, Jacob Zuma, declaring his refusal to campaign for the African National Congress (ANC) in the upcoming 2009 general election, recently-deposed South African President Thabo Mbeki famously declared:… I find it strange in the extreme that today cadres of our movement attach the label of a cult of personality to me, and indeed publicly declare a determination to kill to defend your own cause, the personal interests of the personality, Jacob Zuma!
What Keeps Society Together? Societal Cohesion, South Africa as a Challenging Case.
My overall research interest is about societal cohesion, what keeps a society together.
Wildness
In this project, I engage with the concept of ‘wildness’, initially in the very problematic ways in which it is often used, but then more substantially in its possibilities for (re)thinking human, plant and animal identities, including in ways which decentre the human.