The WISER Podcast: Recent Episodes
WISER
Conversations, audio-essays and public talks from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Hlonipha interviews Achille on winning the Holberg prize, on their backgrounds, institutions and intellectual obsessions.
In this week’s episode, Anneke Rautenbach discusses how, when the writer Bessie Head escaped apartheid South Africa and settled in the rural village of Serowe, Botswana, she remained haunted by the violence of her past. In her work on experimental development farms, alongside locals and foreign volunteers, she discovered not only a source of healing, but a subterranean moral philosophy.
Anneke Rautenbach spent time in residence at WiSER in 2022, participated in The WiSER Podcast group and travelled from there to Botswana to conduct archival research at the Bessie Head Papers in Serowe. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on the role of the public intellectual in southern Africa. The PhD focuses on flashpoint moments in recent history when language played a particularly dynamic role -- from anticolonial prophecy to nationalist sloganeering to the metaphors of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.
In this episode of The WiSER Podcast, Cheikh BA discusses the Senegal River as an intense node of knowledge making. He discusses how those who live alongside it observe, name and think about its flows, quantities, evolutions, water paths and distribution. He also shows how, in parallel and sometimes in confrontation, the "modern management" of natural resources translates into developmental and technocratic visions. He invites listeners to reflect with him on ways of encountering this riverine landscape, actually or in our imaginations.
Cheikh BA is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in WiSER’s Regions2050 Research Programme and works on local notions of environmental justice, decolonisation of environmental knowledge and the ecological history of territorial governance in West Africa.
The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.
In this week’s episode, Simon van Schalkwyk discusses our new nuclear age, the re-emergence of a long latent Cold War atavism, including the politics of containment and psycho-warfare. Online ‘nuke maps’ mean you can now simulate the effects of nuclear strikes anywhere in the world. He sets the location for Braamfontain, Johannesburg and sees what (would) happen….
Simon van Schalkwyk is a Visiting Research fellow at WiSER and a senior lecturer in the English Department at Wits University. His research interests focus primarily on poetry, both American and South African, and his debut poetry collection, Transcontinental Delay, appeared in 2021.
The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.
In this episode, Caio Simões de Araújo discusses the politics of infrastructure in Southern Africa, taking as an entry point the Maputo-Katembe bridge, inaugurated in 2018. Araújo argues that the bridge is part of a renewed public investment in infrastructure enabled by Chinese cooperation in Africa. Yet, rather than a straightforward road into the future, the bridge is embedded in a highly complex set of temporal landscapes - ones that warrant close and careful analysis.
In this episode, Timothy Wright discusses the graphic novel Rebirth (2012), which imagines a node of vampire culture in the striated and gritty space of Johannesburg. He reads the book’s terminally ill vampires as offering a surprising, generative vantage point from which to think through some urgent social and political issues of the contemporary moment: whiteness, entanglement, transformation, blood imaginaries, and the global politics of immunity and insulation around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Timothy Wright is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Bilkent University, Ankara and a former post-doctoral fellow at WISER who is spending his sabbatical at the Institute.
The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.
In Episode One of Season Five of The WiSER Podcast, the Reverend Frank Chikane and his son Regotsofetse Chikane, recollect and discuss the moment – separated by 30 years – they were each arrested for treason – by the apartheid and post-apartheid states, successively. As prominent anti-apartheid activist and #FeesMustFall activist respectively, they retell their experiences - and the conversation reflects on the state of a democratic South Africa, the current dangers it faces and what choosing to fight for a more democratic state has meant and will come to mean, then and now.
In this week’s episode, we present Part Two of our mini-series on the work of Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi by Hlonipha Mokoena of WISER. Last week, Mokoena offered an analysis of Mokgosi’s paintings from multiple perspectives. In today’s episode, she speaks to the artist himself, a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion that takes up many of the issues introduced last week.
The members of The WISER Podcast Team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.
Today we release the first of a two-part podcast series that focuses on the work of Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi. In today’s episode, Hlonipha Mokoena, Associate Professor at WISER, discusses his work.
“There seems to be no better time than the present for us to have a conversation about what it means to be a black artist who paints black subjects”, says Mokoena, as she draws on her recent writing about the artist. How can we think about the politics of the intimate in Mokgosi’s work? What Southern diasporas within diasporas are revealed? What is Mokgosi’s version of black internationalism? And what are the meanings of his incorporation of images of Frederick Douglas in his paintings? All this and more is opened up in what follows. In next week’s episode, Mokoena talks to the artist himself in a fascinating interview that takes up many of the themes she introduces to us today.
Meleko Mokgosi was born in 1981 in Botswana. He is currently Associate Professor in Painting/Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. He is represented in South Africa by Stevenson Gallery and in the USA by Jack Shainman Gallery. His artwork may be viewed at these websites:
https://www.stevenson.info/artist/meleko-mokgosi/biography
https://jackshainman.com/artists/meleko_mokgosi
https://www.melekomokgosi.com
The members of The WISER Podcast Team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.
Today we hear from Najibha Deshmukh, WISER’s Senior Administrator and Adila Deshmukh, WISER’s Financial Manager. Najibha and Adila, who are sisters, give us their take on life at WISER, offering an inside view of everyday life, from both the front desk and the Institute’s financial office. In a richly nuanced and finely observed - and often very funny – set of observations, they reveal aspects of their own stories over the last two decades, of the pressures and pleasures of their jobs, and of the lives, minds and foibles of academics at work. They talk about the joys of seeing students graduate and become professors – and about some of the strangest requests they received over the years. It’s a wonderful listen and will give you a new perspective on the academy – enjoy!
The members of The WiSER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Achille Mbembe.
Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu discusses the coup of November 2017 in Zimbabwe, the death of Robert Mugabe, and why it is necessary to build a new set of digital tools for re-reading the country’s history. The podcast grapples with the question: how do we read a country beyond an individual?
The members of The WiSER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Achille Mbembe.
Today we release the second of several podcasts marking WiSER’s 20th anniversary. The Institute was launched in September 2001 and we asked a number of colleagues from Wits, the region and beyond to offer reflections on the last two decades of WiSER’s critical engagement with our country, our region and the world at large. In doing so, we also wish to thank all who have contributed to the Institute’s work over the last two decades, making it into what it is today.
Today we release the first of several podcasts marking WiSER’s 20th anniversary. The Institute was launched in September 2001 and we asked a number of colleagues from Wits, the region and beyond to offer reflections on the last two decades of WiSER’s critical engagement with our country, our region and the world at large. In doing so, we also wish to thank all who have contributed to the Institute’s work over the last two decades, making it into what it is today.
In this podcast, we present highlights from an event “On Violence: An Intergenerational Conversation about Women's Resistance” held at WiSER on August 11 2021.
Convened by WISER, the Governing Intimacies project at Wits and No10Publishers, the discussion features two feminist writers and activists, Zubeida Jaffer and Simamkele Dlakavu in conversation with Sisonke Msimang, prominent author and WISER writing fellow.
The focus, as the title implies, is on questions of generation, feminism and activism in relation to South Africa’s violent histories.
Welcome to Season 4 of The WISER podcast. We begin this season with a number of event podcasts, capturing key debates happening at WISER on matters of urgent national importance.
Today we release a two-part series, Uprising in South Africa, in which commentators reflect on the crises in KZN province which manifested so powerfully in the events of a few weeks ago, variously referred to as insurrection, food riots and looting sprees.
The podcast is an edited version of an event hosted by WISER, The Forge and the C150 Chair in Gender and African Politics and convened by Shireen Hassim who holds that Chair. While the intensity of the events that erupted in those weeks has receded, the participants in the discussions we listen to today remind us that the causes are systemic and ongoing and we would do well to keep them at the forefront of our analyses going forward. Speakers in Part 1 are Itumeleng Mahabane, Glen Robbins, Thina Nzo, and Ryan Brunette
For Ryan Brunett’s short video, which many of the speakers refer to, see here.
Welcome to Season 4 of The WISER podcast. We begin this season with a number of event podcasts, capturing key debates happening at WISER on matters of urgent national importance.
Today we release a two-part series, Uprising in South Africa, in which commentators reflect on the crises in KZN province which manifested so powerfully in the events of a few weeks ago, variously referred to as insurrection, food riots and looting sprees.
The podcast is an edited version of an event hosted by WISER, The Forge and the C150 Chair in Gender and African Politics and convened by Shireen Hassim who holds that Chair. While the intensity of the events that erupted in those weeks has receded, the participants in the discussions we listen to today remind us that the causes are systemic and ongoing and we would do well to keep them at the forefront of our analyses going forward. Speakers inPart 2 are S’bu Zikode, Kira Erwin, Monica Laganparsad and Elisha Kunene.
Our latest episode focuses on oral poetry from the Kenyan coast and its relation to indigenous marine conservation knowledges; black travel writing from the Indian Ocean world in the early twentieth century; learning to surf and read waves in Cape Town; and the recent rise in postcolonial fiction about mermaids.
Each of these topics, and many more, form part of a special issue of the magazine Wasafiri on "Water", edited by Charne Lavery and Stephnaie Jones and available here: https://www.wasafiri.org/product/wasafiri-issue-106/. The issue covers multiple forms of writing on water from around the world - from the Philippines to the Somali coast, Kenya to Antarctica - in a time of planetary change. It forms part of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project (www.oceanichumanities.com) at WiSER .
The podcast features contributions from Charne Lavery (University of Pretoria and WISER, Wits), Jauquelyne Kosgei (WISER, Wits), Asma Sayed (Kwantlen Polytechnic University), Hedley Twidle (UCT) and Betsy Nies (University of North Florida).
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
This episode focuses on the most prominent themes in global and local preoccupations with the models of government that China holds out for African states and peoples. We focus, in particular, on the threats and limits of state surveillance for African countries as they show themselves around the COVID19 pandemic, and the growing international concerns about the eYuan, the new digital currency championed by the People's Bank of China. The podcast is a conversation between Keith Breckenridge (Wits), Iginio Gagliardone (Wits), Mingwei Huang (Dartmouth), and Bulelani Jili (Harvard). The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
The second episode of our two-part series on Regions2050: mobility, extraction, circulation focuses on the Congo Basin eco-region of Africa, the world’s second largest rainforest block after the Amazon. In particular, the podcast examines how significant demographic, ecological, political and economic changes in this region are linked to climate. It also explores the interactions between human populations and the environments in which they live.
The podcast is a conversation between Rogers Orock (Department of Anthropology, Wits), Achille Mbembe (WISER) and Joshua Walker (Congo Research Group, Center on International Cooperation, New York University). All are members of the research cluster on the Congo Basin within WISER’s Regions2050 project.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
Today we release the next episode of The WISER Podcast entitled Regions2050: mobility, extraction, circulation. This is Part One of a two-part series.
The podcast is a conversation between Achille Mbembe (WISER) and Mpho Matsipa (Architecture and Planning/WISER) exploring the dynamics of mobility, circulation and extraction and reflecting on the new pathways of regionalisation in an African continent characterised — and sometimes saddled with — multiple and porous borders.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
Today we release the next episode of The WISER Podcast entitled Lost Books: Four Narratives On Absent Books. Focusing especially on books by women, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Sarah Nuttall, Isabel Hofmeyr and Confidence Joseph offer an array of engaging short narratives on books lost, hidden, dreamt, thrown overboard or killed on social media. The episode is dedicated to all those students, staff and workers, and the manuscripts, books, films and artefacts, impacted or destroyed by the recent fires at the University of Cape Town.
Find our WISER Transcripts here -
https://wiser.wits.ac.za/thewisertranscripts
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
Today we release Part Two of The WISER Podcast’s next mini-series, The Futures of the Constitution. It draws on research by WISER Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, on continuities between South Africa’s apartheid past and its democratic present, under the framework of “the new apartheid”.
In this podcast, he continues to explore the South African Constitution’s conception of justice, this time through a comparative lens. He then examines links between the Constitution’s conception of justice and the persistent injustices of South Africa’s present and considers how we might frame a set of future-oriented debates in relation to both.
Today we also release our second batch of WISER Transcripts, making four more of our podcasts available in textual form for ease of citation and reference. Curated and designed by Tinashe Mushakavanhu, the transcripts can be found at this link:
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
Today we release Part One The WISER Podcast’s next mini-series, The Futures of the Constitution. It draws on research by WiSER Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, on continuities between South Africa’s apartheid past and its democratic present, under the framework of “the new apartheid”.
In this podcast, Sizwe and Tshepo Madlingozi, Director and Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, critique the Preamble of South Africa's Constitution. They suggest that the Preamble espouses a limited conception of justice which partly explains persistent inequality in South Africa’s present.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
Today we release Part Two of our next mini-series of The WISER Podcast. This two-part series takes as its theme Travelling Technology. It draws on research led by Prof Richard Rottenburg at WISER spanning 15 African countries and focusing on large technical systems as well as stand-alone devices to reflect on the amalgamation of techno-science with social, political, juridical and cultural elements in concrete African contexts beyond the modernist binary of nature and culture.
In this podcast, after a brief introduction by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh (WISER) we hear from Katrien Pype (KU Leuven) on “radio phonie” in Kinshasa, and then Sara Geenen with Simon Marijse (U Antwerp) tell the story of the “scaphandre” on the Congolese Shabunda river. The two detailed studies show moments of translation in the circulation of technologies and challenge the difference between innovation, tweaking and improvisation.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.
This two-part series addresses Travelling Technology. It draws on research spanning 15 African countries and focusing on various technical assemblages to reflect on the amalgamation of techno-science with social, political, juridical and cultural elements in concrete African contexts beyond the modernist binary of nature and culture.
In today's podcast, we hear from Richard Rottenburg (WISER) on the key intellectual dimensions of this ongoing project, followed by Faeeza Ballim (UJ) on Eskom and Medupi power stations in South Africa, and Iginio Gagliadone (Wits) on the politics of the Internet in Ethiopa.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Mpho Matsipa, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Achille Mbembe, Bronwyn Kotzen and Isabel Hofmeyr.
Part 2 of our mini-series on Unsettlement explores the predicament of those who are stranded in states of indefinite displacement, deferred arrival and recurrent departure around the world today. It has emerged from a collaboration between The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, Africana Studies at Barnard College in New York and WISER.
In this episode, we hear four further interventions on how we might think about unsettlement. Listen to Rosalind Morris (Columbia), Johannes Machinya (WISER), Sarah Nuttall (WISER) and Achille Mbembe (WISER).
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Mpho Matsipa, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Achille Mbembe, Bronwyn Kotzen and Isabel Hofmeyr.
Today we launch our 2021 Season of The WISER Podcast. This year, from March to September, we will run concept-based podcasts, each in two parts over two weeks. Our first edition of The WISER Podcast features the theme of Unsettlement, and we approach our topic from 8 different angles.
The topic is born of a collaboration between The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, Africana Studies at Barnard College in New York and WISER.
Listen in to find out what the term Unsettlement draws into focus in an original way. Speakers in Part 1, released today are Rosalind Morris (Columbia University), who introduces the theme, Isabel Hofmeyr(Wits/WISER), Yvette Christianse (Barnard College) and Mpho Matsipa (Wits/WISER).
Today we also launch The WISER Transcripts, compiled and curated by Tinashe Mushakavanhu (WISER). Here, we make available all editions of The WISER Podcast in textual form, for ease of access, reference and citation. Please see our first four releases at this link: https://wiser.wits.ac.za/thewisertranscripts.
The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Bronwyn Kotzen, Isabel Hofmeyr, Achille Mbembe and Mpho Matsipa.
Charne Lavery discusses how theory from the south can be taken further south, towards the currents and creatures of the Southern Ocean.
Charne Lavery is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and a Research Fellow in the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project (www.oceanichumanities.com) based at WISER. Her work explores literary and cultural representations of the deep ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean and Antarctic seas, researching oceanic underworlds of the global South in a time of climate change.
Keith Breckenridge discusses Biometric Capitalism and African economics in the 21st Century.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Keith Breckenridge is a Professor of History, and Deputy Director of WISER.
For more WISER research, visit: https://wiser.wits.ac.za/publications
Using Covid-19 as a point of departure, Sarah Nuttall explores the “redistributed university”. She considers new and older challenges that have contributed to redefining institutions of higher learning. As the university constantly reconfigures itself in response to multiple pressures and struggles, including economic pressures, struggles for social justice and rapid technological change, she asks - concretely and speculatively - how we might approach the institution in its present and historical formation.
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and the Director of WISER. Her research focuses on literary and visual cultures, city lives and forms and critical cultural theory. She has authored or edited many influential books, published more than 60 articles and book chapters and her work is widely cited across disciplines. For eight years she has directed WISER, one of the largest and most established Humanities Institutes across the global South.
https://wiser.wits.ac.za
In Episode 4 of Season 2 of The WISER Podcast, Shireen Hassim and Sisonke Msimang discuss the life, politics and legacy of Winnie Mandela.
Shireen Hassim is Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics and Visiting Professor at WiSER. She has published three articles on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: “A Life of Refusal: Winnie Madikizela Mandela and violence in South Africa (Storia della Donne); “Not Just Nelson’s Wife: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Violence and Radicalism in South Africa”, and “The Impossible Contract: The Political and Private Marriage of Nelson and Winnie Mandela” (both in the Journal of Southern African Studies)
Sisonke Msimang discusses the life, politics and legacy of Winnie Mandela.
Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018) and is a Writing Fellow at WISER.
Sakiru Adebayo examines the multiple melancholies associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sakiru Adebayo is a sessional lecturer in the Department of African Literature and Postdoctoral Fellow at WiSER, the University of the Witwatersrand.
Terry Kurgan discusses two photographs, each found in her father’s possession, and both taken on the edge of graves, one in Ein al-Beida, Palestine and the other in a forest just outside the town of Panevėžys in Lithuania. She considers the two photographs as entry points to a new book she has just begun that will traverse perhaps the darkest period of mid-twentieth century European and Middle Eastern History.
Terry Kurgan is a visual artist and writer based in Johannesburg. Her recent publication, Everyone is Present, written while she was a Writing Fellow and Artist in Residence at WiSER, won South Africa’s premier literary prize, the 2019 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2019 Photo Arles Book Prize, and selected as a Finalist for the 2019 New York based National Jewish Book Awards. Terry is currently a Research Associate at WISER, working on a new book project, and co-director of the independent publishing project, Fourthwall Books. www.terrykurgan.com
Johannes Machinya discusses the everyday experience of living with potential or imminent arrest and deportation for undocumented migrants in South Africa.
Johannes Machinya is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow co-hosted by WISER and the African Studies Center (ASC) at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on migration, labour and politics, migration control and the temporalities associated with waiting and the anticipation of deportation.
Melanie Boehi discusses botanical gardens and public parks in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic with Luciano Concheiro San Vicente and Phakamani m’Afrika Xaba.
Melanie Boehi is a Visiting Researcher at WISER and a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoctoral Fellow. She is currently finalising a book about the history of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town and doing research about journalist Ruth Weiss.
Phakamani m’Afrika Xaba is a senior horticulturalist and researcher based at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town. He is the co-author of the book Traditionally Useful Plants of Africa: Their Cultivation and Use (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Luciano Concheiro San Vicente holds a Ph.D. in history from The National Autonomous University of Mexico and an M.Phil in Sociology from Cambridge University. He is currently doing research about the history of Chapultepec, Mexico's most important urban park.
Visit our website: https://wiser.wits.ac.za
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Makhosazana Xaba discusses the life and work of Noni Jabavu, memoirist, reader, radio broadcaster and columnist. Makhosazana Xaba has published three poetry collections, compiled and edited five anthologies and is the 2014 co-winner of the SALA Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award for her collection, Running and other stories. She has twice been a Writer in Residence at WISER and is currently a Research Associate at the Institute working on a biography of Noni Jabavu.
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Ruth Sacks discusses post-independence sites in Kinshasa, focusing especially on L’Échangeur [the Exchange] in Limete as a means of understanding processes of disrepair and reconstruction in the city today.
Ruth Sacks is a South African visual artist and academic based in Johannesburg who completed her PhD at WiSER and currently holds a Postdoc at the SARChI Chair for Social Change at the University of Fort Hare. Sacks’ first academic book, Congo Style: From Art Nouveau to African Independence (Michigan University Press and Wits University Press), is forthcoming in 2021.
Confidence Joseph, Ryan Poinasamy, Meghan Judge and Mapule Mohulatsi go below the water line as they describe new avenues for research in the environmental humanities and critical ocean studies.
Confidence Joseph is an African Literature doctoral candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Mapule Mohulatsi is a reader and writer from Johannesburg. She is completing a PhD in African Literature at Wits. Ryan Poinasamy is based in the department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand. Meghan Judge is an artist and researcher working on a PhD in creative work at the Wits School of Arts.
All four are fellows of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South programme at WiSER.
Pamila Gupta and Drew Thompson discuss the visual archive of Ricardo Rangel, whose photography documents the last days of Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique. Pamila Gupta is a Professor of historical anthropology at WiSER. Her latest book is Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography (2019). Drew Thompson is Assistant Professor of Historical and Africana Studies at Bard College.
Hlonipha Mokoena examines links between masculinity, dress and "war work" in colonial South Africa.
Hlonipha Mokoena received her Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town in 2005. She is currently an associate professor at WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (2011).
Nolwazi Mkhwanazi explores her work on Childbirth, Natality and 'Young Families'. Nolwazi Mkhwanazi an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at WISER. She leads the Institute’s programme in Medical Humanities. She is the co-editor of “Young Families: Gender: sexuality and care”, and of “Connected Lives: Families, Households, health and care in contemporary South Africa”.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu speaks about a forgotten archive of letters written after Dambudzo Marechera's death, and his attempt to run a writing surgery for young war returnees from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle.
Dr. Tinashe Mushakavanhu is currently a postdoctoral fellow at WiSER. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent. His forthcoming book is, Reincarnating Marechera: Notes on a Speculative Archive (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020).
In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Achille Mbembe and Dilip Menon discuss the newly published book Capitalisms a Global History, co-edited by Menon and Dr Kaveh Yazdani and published by Oxford University Press.
Professor Achille Mbembe is a world-renowned theorist, public intellectual and Professor of History and Politics at WISER. Professor Dilip Menon is Mellon Chair in Indian Studies and Director of CISA at Wits. Visit: https://wiser.wits.ac.za
In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, Achille Mbembe and Dilip Menon discuss the newly published book Capitalisms a Global History, co-edited by Menon and Dr Kaveh Yazdani and published by Oxford University Press. In this section, Mbembe and Menon explore technology, COVID-19, and capitalisms in Africa.
Professor Achille Mbembe is a world-renowned theorist, public intellectual and Professor of History and Politics at WISER. Professor Dilip Menon is Mellon Chair in Indian Studies and Director of CISA at Wits. Visit: https://wiser.wits.ac.za
Professor Richard Rottenburg discusses the cohabitation of people and pathogens in an increasingly digitised world. Richard Rottenburg is an Anthropologist of Science and Technology and Professor at WISER. His many-acclaimed works include Far Fetched Facts and The World of Indicators. Visit https://wiser.wits.ac.za
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh examines the politics of nuclear-weapon-free zones in Africa, a region of the world not usually associated with the geopolitics of nuclear disarmament. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at WISER. He recently completed a DPhil in International Relations at Oxford. His first book, Democracy and Delusion: 10 Myths in South African Politics (2017), won the City-Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award. https://wiser.wits.ac.za
In this episode two WISER Fellows, Dr Mpho Matsipa and Bronwyn Kotzen, explore similarities in their work relating to space, race, and the politics of cement.
Mpho Matsipa joined WiSER in April 2019. She completed her PhD in Environmental Design in Developing Countries at the University of California, Berkeley. Mpho is currently the curator of the African Mobilities Project. Mpho divides her time between the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, where she holds a position as lecturer in design and urban research, and WISER.
Bronwyn Kotzen joined WISER as a Visiting Research Fellow in January, 2020. Bronwyn is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral research focuses on the political economy of materiality in urban Africa by tracing Pan-African cement flows and is supported by Emory University’s African Critical Enquiry Programme and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.Bronwyn’s broader research explores the interstices between materiality, politics and place in rapidly developing urban centres.
For more, visit https://wiser.wits.ac.za
Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at Wits and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Her latest book, forthcoming from Duke University Press, is Hydrocolonialism: Coast, Custom House and Dock-side reading.
In this episode, she discusses the work with Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, a post-doctoral fellow at WISER.