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2023
The evolution and philosophy of endogenous death
The fate of every organism is death—or so it seems.
The Geopolitics of Language and Literature Migration
The Anglophone diaspora arose during the period we identify as the Anthropocene.
The Idea of Humanity and the Challenge of Cultural Diversity
Who and what we are as humans have always been controversial questions.
The Law of Commissions: A Comparative Study of the Place of Commissions in Law and Governance.
The purpose of this work is to explore the role of Commissions; interrogate existing Commission discourses; examine the power of Commissions and their place in law and governance; investigate the global developments of their legal and socio-political dimensions; a process that involves a holistic approach that probes and unpacks Commissions in their complexity.
The lifeworld-phenomenology of rehabilitation: developing a practice based theory of life-changes and learning
Worldwide, at least 2.2 billion people live with visual impairment and there is a huge need for these cases to be addressed or prevented.
The logic of decoloniality
Whilst most decolonial scholars have made important contributions on the nature of coloniality as an intellectual problem and the need to decolonise, the practical deployment of decolonial programme is yet to commence.
The political economy of oral health in sub-Saharan Africa – uncovering the silent oral health crisis and exposing reasons for low public health priority
The focus of the Stellenbosch Annual Seminar on Constitutionalism in Africa (SASCA) 2019 will be on constitutionalism and the economy in Africa.
The political economy of oral health in sub-Saharan Africa – uncovering the silent oral health crisis and exposing reasons for low public health priority
Oral diseases are among the most common and among the most neglected diseases of mankind.
The politics of dress, gender and sexuality in Malawian popular art
This proposed study, which is an extension of my current research, sets out to examine the representations of the chitenje (a wrap-around cloth) in Malawian popular arts, as a site for examining how questions of gender, sexuality, class, and national belonging are negotiated.
The rare earth metals, from intriguing materials to political hot potatoes
This project will be a comprehensive review of the rare earth elements (REE) .
The role of children’s early development in lifelong health and human capital
The importance of early childhood development (ECD) for both individual and societal economic and humanitarian growth is increasingly appreciated and efforts by governments and multilateral agencies to improve human development are taking shape, including in low- and middle-income countries.
Transdisciplinary thinking through food in South Africa
The communicative, semiotic, creative and relational meanings surrounding food expand understandings of power dynamics, identity-constitution and discursive perceptions of being human.
Trauma, vulnerability and mental health problems in South Africa and Sweden
Globally, mental illness is more responsible for extreme distress than poverty or unemployment, and, to compound the problem, mental illness interacts with poverty and unemployment in socially and economically impactful ways that create reinforcing cycles.
Vertical Indian Ocean: A Cultural History of the Southern Submarine
The Indian Ocean has been called the ocean of the South, as well as the ocean of the future.
Water, drought and song in the Kingdom of eSwatini
This project aims to explore ideas surrounding water within the musical world of eSwatini.
West African Migrants in Urban Spaces: Dakar, Tangier, and Barcelona
This project analyzes the presence and impacts of West African migrants in urban spaces in North Africa and Southern Europe: how the sociopolitical contexts they enter shape their lives and livelihoods and, in turn, how they challenge and alter those contexts, raising questions about rights, membership, and lived diversity.
Work at Sea: Port dynamics, migrant workers, and industrial fishing fleets in African waters
Industrial fishing is a dangerous, difficult job: workers endure long working hours, cramped living conditions, inadequate provision of food and water, and low wages.
2022
Academic Freedom and the Decolonization of Knowledge: Conflicts and Dilemmas in Higher Education
Decolonization may be taken as a phase in the history of colonized people that is represented by a movement towards a critique of colonial effects during both colonialism and postcolonialism.
Adaptive Peace: Insights from Complexity for Strengthening the Resilience and Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems
Complexity theory offers new ways of understanding how social-ecological systems function under pressure, for example how climate change related stressors may exacerbate competition over scarce resources or limit livelihood options.
Advancing Gender Equality in Africa and Globally: Strengthening Health and Economic Outcomes by Learning What Works at Scale
Around the world, gender inequality continues to shape individual opportunities, families, and societies.
Alternative targets for Antibiotics, fighting infection with higher specificity
Antibiotic resistant is a global problem that will only increase over time and is further highly relevant for the tuberculosis patients of South Africa.
Aquatic ecosystem protection; the application and effectiveness of metal bioavailability-based approaches
Metal bioavailability-based approaches are used to predict the bioavailability of metals in surface waters and toxicity to aquatic organisms.
Artiste Rivalry, Digital Fandom and the Narratives of Oppositional Politics in Nigerian Hip-Hop
The place of fans in the sustenance of superstar visibility and the accompanying digital narratives of fandom have been understudied in Nigerian hip-hop.
Beasts of the Southern World: multi-species history and the Anthropocene
Charles Darwin jotted in his notebook in 1838, He who understands the baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.
Bodies and/as Texts: Representing queer on screen in contemporary Africa
The body is an assemblage of not only the physical and the material.
Capricious Connections: the politics of knowledge infrastructure in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Islands
This project enables the completion of ongoing research that explores knowledge systems in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean islands.
Certain uncertainties: Identity politics, power and categorisation in postcolonial Kenya
Before the 2017 election, Kenya’s President declared the minority ethnic Makonde community recognised as ‘the 43rd tribe of Kenya’.
Chinese investments in Africa: Exploring the developmental potential
The global economic architecture has in recent decades undergone a significant level of reconfiguration in terms of trade and investments as a result of the emergence of China as a direct competitor to highly industrialised countries of the North.
Citizenship on Catfish Row: Race and Nation in American Popular Culture
Citizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first great film, D.
Compensation Through Expropriation without Compensation? Land Reform and the Future of Redistributive Justice in South Africa
The decision by the South African Parliament in February 2018 to review the constitutional property clause possibly allowing for expropriation without compensation has fervently brought the land question back into public debate.
Computational modelling of tubular fibrous scaffold Structures for cardiovascular graft applications: parametric modelling, and Finite Element Analysis
The design of tubular structures with desirable internal and external topology represents a challenge for tissue engineering of cardiovascular grafts.
Consistent Quantification as a Unifying Principle in Physics and the Sciences
Science relies on numeric quantification, which can be traced back to Euclid, Galileo, and Newton.
Conspecifics matter – An integrated approach to reveal the basis and the significance of social interactions
Social interactions are central to most organisms and the social environment experienced by an individual influences its behaviour and ultimately its (evolutionary) fitness.
Deadly Illusions: The Ukraine War and Russian Historical Imagination
Some commentators have aptly called Russia’s Ukraine war a war of obsession.
Deciphering the biological consequences of geometrical isomerization of natural compounds.
Plants produce myriad of compounds with various biological properties.
Decoding the Ancient Sacred Landscapes of the Arid Southern Levant (Southern Jordan/Israel): The Desert Cults Mapping Project
The proposed project investigates the sacred landscapes of the southern arid margins of the Levant (now southern Jordan/Israel), as observed by the spatial distribution and the material culture of the cultic and funerary sites of the mostly semi-pastoral peoples that lived in the area from the Neolithic to the Early Islamic period (ca.
Developing a complexity science capable of solving practical, important, and urgent problems
The process of transforming agriculture in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is, especially for policymakers and decisionmakers, highly complex.
Development from below? Islands of effectiveness or Enclaves in South Africa today.
What influence does living or working in a given area, an area delimited –even if informally - from its surroundings, have on those inside and those outside this distinct area?
Developmental origins of racial and gender bias in very young children and how it unfolds
This project addresses how, and how early, racial and gender biases emerge in young children and how they are shaped by the linguistic and social communities (families, schools, neighborhoods) in which children are raised.
Digital State Capitalism: African Smart Cities and a Game-Theoretic Perspective on Global Data Governance in Flux
The increasing digitalisation of international trade deepens globalisation, and data flows play a key role in this transformation.
Fintech for SME financing in Africa
SME financing has often been described as the missing middle piece of finance as SMEs are less likely to obtain financing than larger corporates or even micro borrowers.
Gandhi’s Satyagraha: Exploring Non-Violent Alternatives for Effective Political Resistance and Transformation
Challenges confronting our contemporary world like terrorism, populism, and religious pluralism recommend revisiting Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha.
Global trout: investigating environmental change through more-than human world systems
This project investigates how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to new modes of conservation and environmental management that are responsive to the complex histories and politics of species introductions.
Global Value Chain Law: A Socio-Legal Approach to the Constitution of Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations
Ongoing tensions concerning cross-border supplies of medical equipment and vaccines and accusations of vaccine nationalism illustrates the pivotal importance of global value chains (GVCs).
Identity and Belonging: Teenage Parenthood in Kampala’s Informal Settlements
Informal settlements (slums) are rapidly growing in the developing world.
Land Reform and Rural Production in South Africa
The Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture (2019) argued that ‘land reform must be oriented around growing the agricultural sector to foster economic development, and not purely be an endeavour to transfer land’.
Licence to Talk
Licence to Talk is an attempt to describe the ‘actually-existing’ South African public sphere in all its messy complexity.