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2027
The Mfecane Macro-Narrative: An Exploration of Sovereignty and Time in Southern African Literature
The project builds on two assumptions. One is that the problem of sovereignty in the postcolonial world can be engaged and explored with precision through literary fiction. The other is that in southern Africa, the long historical tail of the 19th-century upheavals known as the Mfecane has generated a wide range of literary responses in the region of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Through comparative readings of this corpus, the intention is to discern transnational patterns and contrasts - across different periods - in how writers have dealt with sovereignty and power in this historical context. This can be seen as a contribution to the decolonisation of the region's historiography.
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?
Ukuhamba kukubona (to travel is to see): a feminist exploration of the intellectual legacies of black women's mobilities
This project investigates the mobilities of black women in Southern Africa.
Uncertainty-Aware Artificial Intelligence for Business Decision-Making in Africa
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in business decision-making across African economies, shaping strategic choices in finance, energy, healthcare, logistics, and digital platforms. However, most AI systems adopted in business contexts are developed under assumptions of data stability, institutional predictability, and low structural uncertainty; conditions that rarely hold in African markets. This project investigates how different forms of uncertainty (statistical, structural, contextual, and institutional) interact with AI-driven business decision-making in Africa. It develops a conceptual and analytical framework for uncertainty-aware AI, integrating insights from statistics, machine learning, and business strategy. Rather than treating uncertainty as a technical nuisance to be eliminated, the project positions uncertainty as a central feature of African business environments that must be explicitly represented, interpreted, and managed. The research is theory-led
Understanding the effects of malaria parasites and vector biomolecular dynamics on malaria transmission through multiscale modelling and agent-based models
Malaria remains a significant public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
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.
Wetland gentrification in African cities: Implications for urban governance, planning, and theory
While studies in the global North have focused on ‘green gentrification’ driven by park developments and eco-friendly initiatives, a different phenomenon is unfolding in rapidly urbanizing African cities.
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.
Activist Language Scholarship: A Framework for Integrity
Our project joins sociolinguistics, philosophy of science, and research ethics in an extensive and close collaboration to explore the conditions of integrity in politically engaged scholarship.
African population exposure to extreme weather events under solar radiation modification (SRM) geoengineering
Climate change is causing extreme weather events, including droughts, floods, heat waves, and heat stress, which are threatening sectors such as food security, access to drinking water, and public health.
American DNA: Bioethics and the Excavation of Difference from the Human Genome
The resurgence of race in genomic research has renewed longstanding debates about the biological basis of human difference, raising urgent ethical questions about how science reanimates and recodes the meaning of race.
Assessing the impacts of climate change on ecosystem services in African montane ecosystems
The 2030 agenda for sustainable development by the United Nations emphasizes the need to protect the planet from degradation…… (UN, 2015).
Assistance to Visual Impairing People using Deep Learning and Type-2 Fuzzy Logic
Blind or visually impaired people (BVIP) are increasingly encountering difficulties in their daily lives.
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.
Chronocide: Temporal Dimensions of Russian Foreign Policy Discourse
The project aims at deconstructing the temporal dimensions of the Russian foreign policy discourse.
Classification conundrums: Classifying, re-classifying and de-classifying conflicts involving alliances, coalitions, umbrella groups and proxy’s
The proposed monograph aims explore the following constructs, ‘alliances’, ‘coalitions’, ‘umbrella groups’ and ‘proxy’s’ in the context of the law of conflict classification.
Climate Change and Economic Development: Is climate change an opportunity for Africa?
This project challenges two dominant narratives. First, that the African continent will only be a victim of climate change. Second, that existing economic models appropriately cater for climate change.
Closing the Narrative Loop: Indian and South African Constitutionalism in the Age of Reflexive Globalisation
It is planned to use the time at STIAS to find out whether something like an African type of constitutionalism is developing or whether constitutionalism in Africa develops more or less along the lines of Western constitutionalism.
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.
Cost of Testimony: Mediating and Marketing the Suffering of Distant Others
My project explores the aesthetics, ethics and politics of literary witnessing in five auto/biographical texts from the S-21 detention centre in Cambodia in relation to the politics of representation and the mediation of victims’ voices in witness literature from the cultural margins.
Critical Raw Materials and Technological Transitons: tethinking natural resource-led development models
Critical raw materials (CRMs) are increasingly vital to contemporary economies and societies.
Decay Widths of Baryon Resonance
A meson fluctuation about a two-flavored chiral soliton model is studied.
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.
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.
Faith and Food: The Intersectionality of Belief, Politics, Security and Human Flourishing in Africa
The place and role of food in religious, cultural beliefs and practices is complex and varies among individuals and communities.
Generative AI to Strengthen Global Health Security
Infectious disease threats to individual and public health are numerous, varied and frequently unexpected.
Geophysical Fingerprinting of African Archaeological Sites: Developing a Multi-Method Framework for Characterizing Historical Clay and Mud Structures
This project aims to develop a comprehensive framework for characterizing traditional clay and mud-based structures in African archaeological contexts.
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.
Historical Feeling: Exploring the Decolonisation of History Education
Emotion is part of history, in the way we live, and experience it.
How the ocean ventilates heat and carbon
A primary challenge to 21st century global climate predictability is understanding the ocean’s role as a heat and carbon sink or source to the atmosphere.
Human models to understand and treat autoimmune disorders
We will use different approaches to clarify what initiates an autoimmune disease and to devise better treatment.
Identification of novel biomarkers for gynecological cancer – when is screening becoming a reality?
Over 1.3 million women are each year diagnosed with one of three major gynecologic cancers, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer or cervical cancer.
Igniting conversations that nurture equitable collaboration and cocreation
It will be my task to engage in conversations that build and offer opportunities for cocreation in research and higher education.
Immunogenicity of multi-epitope transmission-blocking vaccine candidates based on Aedes mosquito saliva proteins
From January 2022 to August 2024, a total of 45,652 cases and 1492 deaths were reported in 12 African countries.
Impact of climate change and land use on the conservation of Pterocarpus species in Burkina Faso (West Africa)
Plant biodiversity is essential to the survival of the human being and the whole biosphere.
Inorganic nitrate, a dietary approach for prevention of cardiovascular disease
We study the chemical biology, physiology, and therapeutic effects of nitric oxide (NO) and related reactive nitrogen oxides.
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.
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.
Land tenure in secondary cities: discourses, practices, and social representations
Building on empirical findings of former projects (spread over the years, from 2014 to 2023), the research project aims at conceiving land tenure otherwise, deviating from standard approaches by putting the articulation of interests and claims first; tracing how actors relate to each other and how they try to make their own claims heard and recognized by others.