March 2026
Contracts in South African customary marriages: What they do, can’t do and their impact on inequalities
Project
The Killing of the Dogs
This story of organised around and imaginary organised dog killing in a South African township during the period of resistance to apartheid oppression.
Project
Generative AI to Strengthen Global Health Security
Infectious disease threats to individual and public health are numerous, varied and frequently unexpected.
Project
How do you sign it? Creating a multimedia multilingual descriptive grammar of South African Sign Language on a digital platform
In August 2023 South African Sign Language (SASL) became the 12th language to be officially recognized in South Africa. This has drastically...
Project
Women Cabinet Ministers in West Africa: Insights from The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone
Across the world cabinet ministers are significant political players and yet they are grossly under researched, in part because of a dearth of consistent and comparable data.
March 2026
How an accidental burp shaped my research career — A tale of vegetables, mouth bacteria, stomach acid and improved cardiovascular health
Project
Waterworlding: More-than-human and more-than-digital
Technology providers from around the world are currently marketing digital water meters to households or communities with the promise of using water more efficiently and distributing it more fairly in the face of increasingly scarce drinking water resources and simultaneous population growth.
Project
Science and Technology in Indian Agriculture: History, Evolution and Emerging Challenges
This project is essentially a plan to write a book on the interrelationships between science, technology and agriculture in India, with specific reference to the challenges of sustainable development and climate change.
March 2026
How do insects breathe? — And other fascinating things you may not know about bugs
Project
Children’s Mental Health and Human Rights Amidst Conflict: How Agency and Activism Shape Psychological Resilience and Survival Skills
This project explores how children living in conflict zones respond to violence, displacement, and systemic injustice—not only as victims, but as active agents of survival and resistance.
Project
Knowledge, Power, and Policy: Constructing a Political Economy of Innovation and Research in Post-Apartheid South Africa
South Africa has long been a leader in scientific research and innovation on the African continent.
March 2026
Desire-Design-Delete: The global fertility industry and future of humanity
Project
The onomastic (re)presentation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in Zimbabwean political discourse (1980-2025)
The Zimbabwean political landscape has been toxic and polarised since the formative years of African nationalist movements in the early 1950s.
Project
What would it take to make a virtual microbiology lab?
Computational Biology offers a valuable complement to complex experimental approaches to study infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis.
March 2026
Mapping the Interconnectedness of Things: Narrating (human) migration and interspecies relations
Project
Spiritual Place-Making in Contemporary Gardens
This project explores the growing synergies between gardening and spirituality.
Project
Breaking the ice: how integrating cryogenic Electron Microscopy can overcome historical scientific isolation and enable local pharmaceutical and vaccine Development in South Africa.
With the award of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three pioneers in cryogenic electron microscopy, the world was awakened to the cutting-edge technology of 'cryo-EM'.
February 2026
American DNA — Race, Genomics, and the Cultural Politics of Bioethics
Project
Epistemology and its discontents: Working as a psychologist in troubled times
Project description to be confirmed
Project
Landscaping the Cape: “improvement”, the politics of visibility & the heritage e/affects of socio-ecological commoning, 1872 – 1948
This project builds on scholarship about landscape and memory in Cape Town by looking at how “nature” historically structured the material making of the cityscape, and the racially-heterogenous socio-natural commons that emerged in the city during the 20th century.
Project
Integration of structure/function predictions into the CERI emerging threat genomic surveillance pipeline
The Centre for Epidemiology Research and Innovation collects high-precision and timely data on emerging health threats by carrying out a world-class genomic surveillance effort.
Project
Euthanasia and Physician assisted suicide (PAS) from a regulatory perspective
This research proposal focuses on the regulation of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS), adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines legal—i.e., constitutional and criminal—analysis with empirical insights from the field of public governance and regulatory governance.
Project
Degrees of becoming: Young women’s use of higher education as a symbolic resource in the making of selfhood
Transitions to adulthood are life-making projects—efforts to construct meaning and possibility even amid uncertainty.
Project
Sounds of life
The title of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" equates life with sound, death with silence.
