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2022
Licence to Talk
Licence to Talk is an attempt to describe the ‘actually-existing’ South African public sphere in all its messy complexity.
Local soil knowledge: a tool for sustainable agricultural systems in Madagascar
Local soil knowledge is an important source of information when designing sustainable agricultural strategies.
Making Mouse Models That Better Reflect Human Metabolic and Neurological Diseases
In addition to their well known functions in the controlling infections, immune cells and inflammatory reactions play crucial roles in metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases, such as obesity and Alzheimer’s disease.
Methodological Work Towards a Contemporary African Ephemeral Literature Archive
The published novel is on the decline across the African continent.
Optical imaging using digital holography with phase apertures
Understanding the world around us begins with observation, and imaging is one of the main observation tools.
Paths from Personalist Rule: Understanding Institutional Transformation in Contemporary Africa
This project analyzes the fates of rulers and regimes which came to power in Africa in the 1980s-90s.
Power, Patronage and the Informal Sector: co-optation and coercion in state-society relations in Zimbabwe and Zambia
This project will use a multi-site comparative design to explore how ruling parties in Zambia (and Zimbabwe) extend their reach through dispensing ‘public’ goods such as market and bus stalls as well as housing developments to rule by co-optation rather than coercion in increasingly adverse political or economic climates.
Prospects for Regional Integration in Africa – A Comparative Perspective
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is the current initiative to form the world’s largest free-trade zone in terms of number of countries.
Psychosocial evaluation of patients with beta thalassemia major in Oman
Homozygous Beta thalassaemia is a lifelong condition requiring regular blood transfusions from infancy.
Quantum and collective phenomena induced by PT-symmetry in opto-electromechanical array
Parity-time (PT) symmetry has attracted a lot of attention in many fields of physics in recent years.
Relational Egalitarianism and the Equality Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
Equality is both a foundational value of the Constitution of South Africa and a protected right.
Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies: Possibilities, Challenges, and Limitations of Interreligious Dialogue, with a Focus on Dialogue in Theology and Education
The growing religious pluralisation of modern societies has placed the question of religions and dialogue at the centre of public and academic attention.
Reversible Technologies
Despite tremendous economic growth rates, especially in rural areas of South Africa and in its neighbouring countries, there is still a subsistence economy predominant.
Sexualities and (Dis)Abilities: (Re)Valuing Being Sexual Humans through Body Narratives
This study reads narratives that focus on the representations of (dis)abled bodies in sexually charged spaces in a bid to (re)value these bodies as they negotiate their humanity as well as their capacity to give and receive pleasure.
Sleeping beauties: Dormant innovations in nature and culture
Innovations in biological evolution and in human culture – from science to the arts – arise by processes with multiple parallels.
Social Regionalism in the Idea of Transnational Labour Law
We have entered a moment of profound challenge for open societies.
Sounding Black Worlds
My project investigates black archives of Atlantic worlds as praxis and method, with a particular focus on sonic aspects.
South African – Swedish effort on pre-hospital diagnostics of stroke and traumatic injuries
The purpose of the present project is the implementation of cost efficient, easy to use, diagnostic tools for stroke and trauma in the sub-Saharan Africa, where there are very limited resources in terms of medical personnel, hospitals and diagnostic devices.
Speaking Animals in African Literature
This project deals with the representation of the narrating animal in present-day African texts written in English, French and Portuguese.
The “Big Hole”, Kimberley South Africa, 1870-1920
The chance find of a diamond on a small hillock in South Africa one hundred and fifty years ago initiated an industrial mining revolution, the effects of which continue to reverberate far into the future.
The City of Hope and the Garden of Life. A Protestant Ethics of Sustainability
The objective of this project is the finalization of a volume on Protestant ethics of sustainability which draws on more than 15 years of inter- and transdisciplinary research into the field.
The future of biological and cultural diversity: The implications of Anthropocene effects
Building on previous research on accelerated change and globalisation and on similarities between biological and cultural processes, this research project studies the ways in which global modernity reduces ecological diversity and cultural variation, and explores which measures are taken to counter this tendency, which takes away options for the future.
The Historical Origins and Development of Universities in South Africa
The intention of the research project and book on the history of universities is to consider and trace how important contemporary issues were understood and addressed historicallyin general, and at specific universities in South Africa.
The Impact of Social Media on Science Communication
Social media are now a major part of our daily life.
The impact of technological change on developing countries
The accelerating capability of computing power and development of artificial intelligence poses new questions regarding the future of work.
The politics of blood and the memory of the martyrs: an inquiry into the political legacy of Bantu Stephen Biko
In September 1977, Bantu Stephen Biko was murdered by the South African security police.
The road between and The call
Mkhululi Mabija and Paul Castles as a librettist-compose team working on two companion pieces of alternative music theatre.
The State versus Neville Alexander and ten others: The causes and consequences of a political trial
This book project concerns the 1963-64 trial of Neville Alexander and ten other members of the National Liberation Front (NLF).
The WetNet: Pathogen Mobility and Fluid Bonding in Twentieth Century Biomedicine
My research, based in close discourse analysis of primary and secondary medical and legal literatures, offers a history of the hepatitis B virus and vaccine development in the period from 1940 to 1988.
The whiteness of Afrikaans literary feminism
In (Black Afrikaans poet) Ronelda Kamfer’s collection Chinatown(2019), she criticises canonical Afrikaans white women poets for their implied complicity with apartheid and continued white hegemony within the Afrikaans literary sphere.
Toward a cognitive science of smell: Reconsidering "higher" cognition from the perspective of a "lower" sense
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary research paradigm that emerged after WWII and that studies the mind at psychological, computational and neurobiological levels of analysis.
Towards designing less-toxic antibiotics
Mitochondria are essential organelles found in every human cell, required to convert food into usable energy.
Trespassing as a way of being: ancestral heritage in South Africa
My study of prehistoric art in the Northern Cape, South Africa probes the quest for an authentic past in relation to the region’s complex, layered history, from ancient traces to contemporary concerns.
Was the Cape a biotic reservoir in the repopulation of Africa after the KT extinction event 66 MY ago?
The extinction of dinosaurs after a 10 km wide meteor struck Earth in today’s Caribbean, 66 million years ago, marked the division between the Cretaceous and Cenozoic (popularly known as the Age of Mammals).
Why Do Authoritarian Regimes in Africa Adopt Women’s Rights Reforms?
The recent authoritarian turn globally raises questions about what happens to women’s rights in such contexts.
Women in Law: Perspectives Across Africa
The corpus of scholarship from the Global North signal an increasing global feminization of the legal profession.
Women in mining frontiers in Africa: Exploring the diverse ways in which women’s lived experiences and livelihoods around sites of extraction are affected by mines
Scholarship on mining frontiers tends to be masculine in focus, covering topic such as the centrality of resource extraction in the colonial and post-colonial projects.
2021
A History of South African Literature - Afrikaans Literature since 1930
The third volume concluding my comprehensive, novel history of South-African/Afrikaans literature explores the period from the 1930s onwards.
Adopting Electronic Nose for Detection of False Codling Moth on Pepper Exports in Uganda
The false codling moth (FCM) is a key quarantine pest in Africa.
African Cinemas: Spaces, Technologies, Audiences and Genres
This research project presents an ethnography and political economy of different spaces – cinemas, film festivals, websites, and other public spaces – where African films are screened, as well as an analysis of contemporary African films and of the genres and trends they represent.
Analyzing Natural Disaster Management Policy in SSA
Although an African Union Comprehensive Strategy Guide for Disaster Risk Reduction (AUDRR) exists, escalating natural disasters continue to aggravate livelihood insecurity across the continent, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Animist Humanism: Decolonizing Philosophy of Religion In And Through African Cosmo-Sense
Increasingly, philosophy of religion is charged with failing to admit its Eurocentric character.
Archaeology of a Hungry Mind
Why and how did we (Homo sapiens) evolve into a species that is dependent on its ‘brains’ rather than its ‘brawn’ for our survival and successful spread across the globe?
Capital Movement Through Trade Misinvoicing in Africa: A disaggregate approach
It is now recognized that poverty reduction efforts in Africa are undermined by capital flight.
Comparative computational study of thrombosis in cerebral and abdominal aortic Aneurysms
Thrombosis is closely linked to aneurysm evolution.
Complexity and the Shift in Modern Science
Science has shifted in the last 120 years from a grounding in the Enlightenment ideas of formalism, determinacy, rationality, and stasis; to a new grounding in organicism, indeterminacy, contingent behavior, and evolutionary openness.
Constitutional Identity and Constitutionalism in Africa
The main purpose of this project is to interrogate whether the challenges faced by the new generation of African constitutions to enhance the prospects for constitutionalism was due, inter alia, to their lack of alignment with the African social context in terms of reflecting an African constitutional identity.
Constitutionalism and the internet in Africa: Progress, challenges and prospects
There is no doubt that significant inroads are made in of information technology in Africa.