Past Academic Projects

Imagining Democracies

Past academic projects I have led and/or worked on are listed below. For further information on webinars and other engagements I ran under these projects, please consult my curriculum vitae. My current focus is on my civic engagement projects which are listed under the Civic and Cultural Practice tab.

I led this interdisciplinary project during my time as a postdoctoral research fellow at the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS) from between 2020-2023. The project used the webinar format, in particular, to explore the present-day and future states of democracy both locally and globally. It built on the concerns explored in a colloquium which ran under the title "Cultures of Populism". I also served as a lead-organizer for the colloquium.

The project was run in collaboration with colleagues from University of Sussex, University of Uppsala and the International Form for US Studies (IFUSS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Through this project, partnerships were forced with institutions such as the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and the Centre for Creative Arts, amongst others.

African Diasporas: Before and After COVID-19

I led this interdisciplinary project during my time as a postdoctoral research fellow at the African Centre for the Study of the United States in 2020. The project focused on examining the state of African diasporas, both in the present and the future. The project had two components: an online conference and a webinar series. The conference and webinar presentations were also adapted for a special issue of Africa in Fact.

The project was run in collaboration with institutions such as University of Michigan and a range of African diasporic networks. It also led to engagements with the Center for African Studies at Howard University.

What is Africanness?: A Visual Arts Project

"What is Africanness?" was a visual arts project that brought into question how we define the concept of "Africanness". The project was run as a collaboration between the African Centre for the Study of the United States, University of Pretoria and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA).

Trauma Studies Group

From 2020-2021, I participated in a trauma studies group comprised of early-career scholars from a range of disciplines. The group explored decolonial approaches to engaging with the field of trauma and memory studies. The group was led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Maikizela, the Research Chair in Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation, and was run under her Centre, the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ). As part of this initiative, I had the opportunity to engage in public dialogues with trauma scholars Michael Rothberg and Cathy Caruth. To watch these dialogues, follow the links attached to each scholar's name.