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2025
“S'obashaya Ngamatye”: Women and Sixty Years of the Armed Struggle in South Africa
This project brings together chapters written by 17 women former guerrillas from uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress military wing and the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (APLA) and the Azanian National Liberation Army, the military wing of the Azanian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO).
A new History of the University and addressing the fundamental issue of the future for cinema studies in times of media convergence.
As former President of Stockholm University, stepping down on Jan 31 2025, my first concern will be to write a brief chapter to a new History of the University, to be published for its 150 year anniversary in 2028, where I have been asked to contribute with a brief summary of my experiences from 12 years of presidency.
Beware of Bad Dogs, A Novel
A story set in contemporary Sierra Leone about a group of politicians who view themselves as leading a prosperous and progressive country versus those of the masses, the citizens, whose experiences differ.
Bringing unique data to wicked problems: developing health system models for equitable access to healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa
Injuries are one of the leading causes of death and disability in low- and middle-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Cell Reprogramming for Neurological Insights and Brain Repair
Mental disorders such as Schizophrenia affect up to 5 million in Africa and epilepsy is the most widespread neurological disorder on the continent.
Corporate regulation to address ESG sustainability
Over the past 25 years or so, large corporations have been under increasing pressure both to improve their performance on environment, social and governance (ESG) issues, and to report better on what they have (or haven’t) done.
Decolonisation and affective worlds: On the worldmaking potential of shame and rage in the South African “post”-apartheid present
This long-term project, with it’s focus on affect, particularly melancholy, shame and rage, is located in a feminist decolonial framework and is aimed at disrupting gender, raced and other entangled binaries and associated violences.
Dogon Muslims, “Pagan” Saints, and Other Seeming Oxymorons in West Africa
Dogon Muslims and pagan saints are key figures emblematic of the dramatic social transformations Mali has witnessed since the mid-20th century.
Environmental degradation, economic development, and gender: A comparative analysis
The project has as its goal to advance a comparative law analysis between Colombia and South Africa in terms of legal interventions to counteract or prevent environmental destruction and its particular gendered effects.
Enzyme Responsive Bioinks for Breast Cancer Tumor Modelling
Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women worldwide.
Freedom Between Order and Chaos: Towards an Indian Theory of Freedom
Any serious study of the Indic ideas of freedom must begin with acknowledging the centrality accorded to order in a polity.
Gender in Turbulent Times: Sexual Violence, Bare Life and Necropolitics
Gender based violence and sexual violence in specific have reached unprecedented levels in countries in the Global North and South.
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.
Inclusive multimodal (re)design for higher education pedagogies in South Africa and Sweden
Higher education globally is undergoing significant transitions due to increasing levels of diversity amongst student populations.
Inflammation in cardiovascular disease: Regional differences between Sub-saharan Africa and Nothern Europe
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality and amounts to about a third of all global deaths.
J.M. Coetzee, Connection, Cognition: Perspectives from the South
The project is a comparative study of the South African-born, now Australian writer J.
Jan Bouws and the Instituut vir Volksmusiek (1960-1972) at Stellenbosch University
The proposed project looks into the activities of the Instituut vir Volksmusiek at Stellenbosch University.
Lift Stories: The intimate publics of elevators in 20th century Johannesburg
This project thinks through the space of the lift as urban affective infrastructure in Johannesburg over the 20th century.
Metaquestions: The Space of Thought in Philosophy and Beyond
This book-length project is tentatively titled Metaquestions: The Space of Thought in Philosophy and Beyond.
Narratives and knowledges for emergent cultures of sustainability: shaping credibility, legitimacy, and implementation of shared decisions
The profound challenge of ensuring the long-term well-being and perhaps even the survival of human society within societal and bio-geo-physical planetary boundaries hinges critically on transforming collective behaviors and embedding and maintaining the changes in cultures of sustainability.
Out of Africa: Human Generative Creativity and the Origins of Language
What makes us human? We have long known that humanitys uniqueness–language and our openended creativity–arose from our ancestors in Southern Africa, a generative promiscuity pervading all we do, from combinatorial tool making to combinatorial language; and from there to music and mathematics.
Phytospheric Justice
This book project follows the symbiotic atmospheric pathways that connect plant and human breath to develop forms of cultural theorizing accountable to an increasingly climate-deranged world.
Race Changes: Shifting Identities in World History
Race Changes is a book about people whose seemingly permanent racial or ethnic identities in fact change over the course of their lifetimes.
Remembering anti-colonial struggles: The politics of memory, culture and national identity in postcolonial Namibia
Against the background of memory activism and decolonial movements in Southern Africa, much discussed since the South African #RhodesMustFall movement in 2015, this project traces the complex transfigurations of anti-colonial struggle memory, culture, and citizenship in postcolonial Namibia from the late 1990s through to the early 2020s.
Signs on stage: Translating theatre into a sign language
Sign languages, the visual-gestural languages of Deaf communities, lack a written form.
South African Literature: Global Challenges, New Humanities
This project positions South African Literature within the emergence of the New Humanities (Medical, Environmental, Digital), and orients both toward Medical, Scientific and Social Sciences’ emphases on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Speaking Through Houses: Property and Personhood in Zimbabwe’s Urban Margins
In contexts of displacement and marginality, people’s aspirations and active material and political struggles for secure housing – alongside their multi-layered efforts at home-making – might be construed as acts of either insurgent optimism or necessary anticipatory investment.
Susceptibility to amyloid-related neurodegenerative diseases evoked by functional amyloid proteins of the gut microbiome – a comparative study of European and African populations
Amyloids are proteins able to form very regular insoluble fibrils.
The Agrarian Question in the 21st Century
Since the start of my career the focus of my scholarly research has been what has been defined as the agrarian question.
The Future of Human Mobility and Migration
The future of human society – and indeed, the very meaning of what it is to be human – is inextricably related to mobility.
The New Internationalist - The Life and Times of Radhabinod Pal
Judge Radhabinod Pal is a forgotten man in international law.
The syntax of Xhosa nominals
Generative linguistic theory holds that language is shaped by principles hardwired in the human brain.
Towards re-conceptualization of socio-cultural climate change maladaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Reconceptualization of socio-cultural climate change maladaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) demands a nuanced understanding of regions diverse social, cultural and environmental contexts.
Word-prosody systems of the Creole languages of the Gulf of Guinea
Creole languages result from extreme linguitic contact between languages with distinct prosodic systems and often do not fit neatly into prototypical linguistic categories.
2024
Aid flows to Africa in the context of continued global destabilising shocks, uncertainty, renewed challenges and aid dependence
Africa has been dependent on official development assistance or aid for decades.
Crossing Boundaries in South Africa’s Divided Cities: how conviviality, creativity and co-operation helped undermine apartheid
Within global urban historiography there has been no detailed exploration of the nature and consequences of mingling across ethnic, racial or national boundaries in cities strongly socially and spatially divided along such as Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem or Johannesburg.
Germline specification and its role in epigenetic inheritance of diseases
The germline functions to perpetuate life and relay genetic and epigenetic information across generations.
Inhospitable Places: Feminist Thinking on Whiteness, Men, and Various Kinds of Women in South African contexts
Inhospitable Places is a feminist project that works with thinking about race, gender and class in contemporary South African contexts.
Legal Prostitution: A Crime Against Humanity?
Despite extensive social science research documenting the coercion and damage attendant and endemic to the sex industry and decades of legal debate on approaches to this problem, no effective legal challenges have resulted.
Local adaptation of parasite off-host stages
Human-caused changes are affecting the environment in ways that challenge many organisms, including parasites.
Migration: An economist’s historical perspective
This project provides a historical perspective on migration, demonstrating that it is the defining feature of our species, without which homo sapiens would not have thrived and populated our planet.
New approaches to anti-obesity therapeutics – Part 2
Obesity is a medical condition defined as the excessive accumulation of fat that presents a risk to human health.
Restitution of Gains from Profit-making Wrongs
The law of unjustified enrichment is about achieving corrective justice, and the aim of my project is about developing a more perfect way of attaining this goal by investigating the phenomenon of enrichment flowing from the invasion of another’s rights.
Sustainability, international trade and digitalisation: Core elements of sustainable soil management governance in the Global South
Based on the results of a previously terminated project Mapping out options for a model legislation on sustainable soil management in Africa, a model legislation for sustainable soil management is currently under development, for adoption by the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and subsequent transmission as a proposal to all national parliaments of the African Union.
Urbanist at Large: Iterating an Urban Sensibility
The STIAS Fellowship will be used to define a new field of research for the next four years.
Where Does The Air Go?: Making a Women's Opera
My project involves writing a song cycle to form the basis of an opera, Where Does The Air Go?