Seminars

Extraction, Global Commodity Trade, and Urban Development in Zambia's Northwestern Province

Monday, 27 October, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Rita
Kesselring

In this Chapter (6), `Trading inequality’ follows copper on its journey from Solwezi to world markets and shows where profits flow.

Mis/trust, language, and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in global digital economies

Monday, 20 October, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Teo
Zidaru

Large-Language Models (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT are key among the so-called ‘AI’ agents that increasingly mediate global digital economies.

A Single Source of Truth

Monday, 13 October, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Keren
Weitzberg

With Huduma Namba and Maisha Namba, the Kenyan government has aspired to create a “single source of truth.” But the controversies these digital infrastructures have generated have instead revealed multiple, incommensurable kinds of truth and truth claims.

Brokers of Trust: Private Land Notaries and Rwanda’s Statist Land Governance

Monday, 6 October, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Fatima
Moolla

Across Africa, land registration initiatives have often produced contestation rather than stability. Rwanda presents a striking exception: its land governance system is widely celebrated as efficient, centralised, and increasingly digital.

Understanding Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) through Nigeria's NIBSS NIP real time payments layer.

Monday, 29 September, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Tunde
Okunoye

That Trust can be fostered through central banking has been established through the work of scholars such as Roseveare, Carruthers, and Haber, North and Weingast amongst others, who focused on English institutional development and the role of elite politics in this institutional development.

The Biometric Promise
 : Technology, Market, and Elections in Africa

Monday, 22 September, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Marielle
Debos

A biometrics revolution is underway across the Global South. Undoubtedly boosted by security and anti-migration policies, biometrics is now also being deployed in the name of development and democracy.

When the State Always Doubts Your Identity

Monday, 15 September, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Nayanika Mathur
& Tarangini Sriraman

In this article, we are gently cautioning against the dominant argument of 'document scarcity' that features in op-eds and survey-driven narratives (the belief that the non-possessi

Socio-Legal Enquiry on a Global Scale: Legal Intermediation, the Geography of Extraction, and the (Re)Negotiation of Africa’s Relationship with the World Economy

Monday, 1 September, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Sara
Dezalay

This paper asks: what does socio-legal enquiry tell us about one of the most pressing problems of our timeclimate change? Can (and should) socio-legal enquiry provide a meaningful critique of the so-called green transition?

‘It has changed our lives completely in such a short time!’: Infrastructural relations and the ‘citizen turned private sector’ in Lomé, Togo’s digital transformation

Monday, 18 August, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Janine Patricia
Santos
This article explores the political economy of digital transformation in Lomé, Togo, and unpacks the relations and contradictions that animate the development of its digital infrastructures.

Beyond Mont Pèlerin: South African Physicist Bankers in a World Without Money

Monday, 11 August, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Efthimios
Karayiannides

Critical political economists have long urged that globalisation and financialisation be studied as products of state behaviour, rather than of unstoppable technological and market forces.

Bankers' Trust : How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse

Monday, 4 August, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Aditi
Sahasrabuddhe

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, others are left to spiral.

Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins

Monday, 28 July, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Hannah
Dawson

Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins explores the dynamic everyday life-making strategies of young men in Zandspruit, a sprawling informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

Digital identification in Jamaica

Wednesday, 21 May, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Luke
de Noronha

While biometric national identification systems have been examined in interesting ways in other postcolonial settings, notably on the African continent and in India, questions over state/citizenship, economy/economisation, and freedom/unfreedom take on a particular valence in Jamaica.

The Quest for the Plant Script

Monday, 5 May, 2025 - 16:00

Problematizing Privacy and Surveillance from the Streets of Delhi

Wednesday, 30 April, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Pariroo
Rattan

Two sets of arguments dominate the mainstream discourse on privacy in India. One position pushes for equal and robust rights to privacy for the poor.

The DPI Approach: Infrastructuring Indian vision of Development

Wednesday, 23 April, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Bidisha Chaudhuri &
Nafis A Hasan

Digital Public Infrastructures or DPIs has become the newest technological export from India that is being globally recognised and efforts are being made to replicate its “success” in other countries of the global south (Sharma and Saran, 2023).

Trust as a decision under ambiguity: Does race matter?

Wednesday, 26 March, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Dambala Kutela
& Nicky Nicholls

This paper examines the role of ambiguity attitudes in shaping trust decisions. Traditional trust games often ignore or conflate the role of risk and ambiguity, though trust decisions typically involve the latter.

Citizenship and Genocide Cards : IDs, Statelessness and Rohingya Resistance in Myanmar

Wednesday, 19 March, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Natalie
Brinham

This book, which is available open access here, draws on Rohingya oral histories and narratives about Myanmar’s genocide and ID schemes to critiqu

Trusting public? Preliminary thoughts on urban seclusion, trust and public space

Wednesday, 12 March, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Talja
Blokland

Trust in people whom we know or work with in organizational contexts has been widely discussed, and scholars have also talked a lot about trust in our governments and other institutions, although not all of them agree that one should call this trust.

Reparative histories, the welfare state, and the future of income assistance for working-age adults in South Africa

Wednesday, 5 March, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Courtney
Hallink

Applying Gurminder Bhambra’s reparative history framework, this paper examines the historical institutionalisation of income protection for working-age adults and asks how this can inform contemporary debates about welfare reform.

On ID, Solidarity and Resistance

Wednesday, 26 February, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Silvia
Masiero

Digital identity systems convert individuals into machine-readable data.

Putting Race in its Place

Tuesday, 11 February, 2025 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Luke
de Noronha

ID Wars in Côte d'Ivoire

Monday, 28 October, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Richard
Banégas
& Armando_
Cutolo

Biometric Statecraft, Policing, and Fingerprint Technology in Palestine/Israel, 1920-1948

Monday, 21 October, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Michelle
Spektor

After the League of Nations designated Palestine as a British Mandate in 1920, British colonial authorities created a Fingerprint Bureau in their newly-formed Palestine Police. When Israel was established in 1948, the Israel Police acquired the Bureau’s experts, methods, and technologies.

IS CLIMATE CHANGE UNGOVERNABLE? | Paul N Edwards

Wednesday, 9 October, 2024 - 13:00

WISER and the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Climate, Sustainability and I

The Moneychanger state

Monday, 30 September, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Kevin
Donovan

Decolonization in East Africa was more than a political event: it was a step toward economic self-determination. In this innovative book, historian and anthropologist Kevin P.

Collaborations to curb involuntary indebtedness among welfare grant recipients

Monday, 16 September, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Deborah
James

This project involved a partnership between the London School of Economics (LSE), human rights NGO Black Sash, Stellenbosch University Law Clinic (SULC), and the National Finance Ombud Scheme South Africa (NFOSA - formerly the Office of the Credit Ombud).

Racialised Publics: Coloniality, Technology and Imaginaries

Monday, 9 September, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Wendy
Willems

The notion of the ‘public sphere’ remains one of the key concepts in the field of media and communications studies.

Rhodes And His Banker: Empire, Wealth And The Coming Of Union

Monday, 26 August, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Richard
Steyn

[ This is an on-line seminar; please

Trust: A question of belief

Monday, 12 August, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
John Keith
Hart

[ This is an on-line seminar; please

Carrot or Stick? Linking Nigeria’s National Identity Number (NIN) coerced enrolment with Questions of a shared Nigerian Identity

Monday, 5 August, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Tunde
Okunoye

Nigeria commenced enrolment to its national identity program in 2007, and enrolment numbers as of July 2023 stands at 101.6 million.

Breathing In: Air and Atmospheres

Thursday, 1 August, 2024 - 12:00

A new seminar series running from February to June 2024

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