Seminars

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

Debt, credit and obligation in Kenya’s 2022 elections

Monday, 29 July, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Ngala Chome
& Justin Willis

Asked why they intended to vote for William Ruto in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election, many people in central Kenya had a simple answer: ‘we owe Ruto a debt’.

Methodologies for Living with Toxicity: Polluting Infrastructures and Environmental, Reproductive and Racial Injustice in North London

Monday, 24 June, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Gala
Rexer

In this exploratory paper, I invite you to visit the Edmonton Waste Incinerator in North London. Since 2020, climate justice and Black Lives Matter activists have been campaigning against the expansion of this already polluting infrastructure.

(Re)Configuring Atmospheres: Design, Technology and the Quest for ‘Pure Air’ in Colonial India

Monday, 20 May, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Awadhendra
Sharan

My presentation shall focus on practices and technologies through which air was sought to be rendered ‘pure’ in cities in colonial India.

Witchcraft logics and the biometric citizen

Monday, 13 May, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Peter
Geschiere

I hope to explore the confrontation between on the one hand efforts of the postcolonial state to create a biometric citizen and, on the other the implications of local visions of the person as double, incomplete etc.; these local views can be summarized as ‘witchcraft’, bu

Queen India’s Air: Saturation, Conditioning and Power

Monday, 22 April, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Ruth
Sacks

This paper embraces what reading for air can bring to a narrative of how a 16th century portrait of Queen Idia appears in Lagos. Likenesses of the legendary Edo queen have been fashioned in Benin tradition since her time (including in ivory and bronze).

The Invention of 'Kumba Age’. How did individuals' age become dynamic in Cameroon?

Monday, 15 April, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Georges
Eyenga

This article analyzes how individuals react to the age barriers established by the state for access to public service in Cameroon.

Hydrocolonialism and Pluvial Time: Materiality as Method'

Monday, 15 April, 2024 - 12:00

Join Sarah Nuttall, esteemed Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for

Photosynthetic Justice

Monday, 8 April, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Helene
Strauss

In this talk, I consider the cultural mediation of “atmospheric violence” (Hsuan Hsu) in South Africa alongside histories of ecocide that have long characterized industrialisation’s relationship to the earth.

Air Makes Free: the 1772 Somerset Case and the Poetics of England’s ‘Pure Air’

Monday, 25 March, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Rowan
Boyson

This paper explores the key poetical and legal metaphor of slaves breathing the ‘free English air’, which was famously asserted in the Mansfield Judgment of 1772 in the case of Somersett vs.

Weathering Saharan Dust Beyond the Spanish Mediterranean Basin: A Dialogue Between Climatology and Postcolonial Critical Theories

Monday, 11 March, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Lucy Sabin &
Jorge Olcina Cantos

This interdisciplinary dialogue between climatology and cultural studies explores the phenomenon of “Saharan dust” that passes through and beyond t

Cosmologies of Breath

Monday, 26 February, 2024 - 16:00
Presented by: 
Uhuru
Phalafala

My grandfather is dead
he was vomiting blood, my mother says

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