The WISER Podcast | Season 4 | The Collection
This week we release Season 4 of The WISER Podcast. The Season has offered mixed formats as we have responded to a rollercoaster of events: we have pondered on the July uprisings in South Africa, marked Women’s month and the struggle against GBV in this country and elsewhere, celebrated WISER’s 20th anniversary, as well as featured new work on Zimbabwe after Mugabe and on Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi’s paintings. Taken together, the Season offers a window into the wide range of WISER’s work, workings and history. All episodes of the final Season of the year are featured at this link: https://wiser.wits.ac.za/
As we close this Season, we would like to express our gratitude for the work done by our WISER Podcast designer, Bronwyn Kotzen. Each week, Bronwyn produces exceptional design work for our next episode, finding a visual language which captures an aspect or more of the episode at hand. One of the best moments for The Podcast Team is awaiting Bronwyn’s banner designs for that week, turning the behind the scenes hard work of making the podcast into a visually rendered reality. Bronwyn is an architect, researcher and writer with a Masters in Architecture from Wits and a Master of Science from the LSE. She is currently working on a PhD entitled Liquid Concrete which traces the flow of cement across sub-Saharan Africa, as a lens through which to examine the relationship between materiality, science, technology, and space. She is also co-editor and project manager on the forthcoming five part book series, Translating Technology in Africa. Sending our warm thanks to Bronwyn from the podcast team – Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.
Podcasts
The WISER Podcast | Episode 7 with Nolwazi Mkhwanazi
In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi speaks about Childbirth, Natality and 'Young’ Families.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Nolwazi Mkhwanazi an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at WISER. She leads the Institute’s programme in Medical Humanities. She is the co-editor and co-author, amongst many other publications, of Young Families: Gender, Sexuality and Care and of Connected Lives: Families, Households, Health and Care in Contemporary South Africa.
The WISER Podcast | Episode 6 with Tinashe Mushakavanhu
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).
WISER Podcast | Episode 5 with Achille Mbembe and Dilip Menon
In the latest two-part episode of The WISER Podcast, Professors Achille Mbembe and Dilip Menon explore the newly published book Capitalisms - A Global History, co-edited by Dilip Menon and Kaveh Yasdani and published by Oxford University Press.
The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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.
WISER Podcast | Episode 4 with Richard Rottenburg

New Podcast Episode: 'Logistics, Blackness and Spatialities'
Dear friends of WISER,
In Episode 2 of The WISER Podcast, Dr Mpho Matsipa and Bronwyn Kotzen explore similarities in their work relating to space, race, and the politics of cement.
Listen on our website or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Mpho Matsipa joined WiSER as a Research Fellow 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. She 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.
The WISER Podcast
Welcome to The WISER Podcast! Published weekly, the podcast features conversations, talks and audio-essays from WISER.
You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. A complete list of all past episodes is at https://witswiser.podbean.com. For podcast transcripts, click here. For more WISER research, click here.
Podcast of Public Lectures from 2015's JWTC
Public lectures from the 2015 Session of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, held at WiSER and the Adler Museum, Wits University, Johannesburg.
A Podcast of Consent, Rights, and the Regulation of Youth Sexuality in South Africa
A podcast of our recent seminar on consent, rights, and the regulation of childhood and adolescent sexuality in South Africa.
Video Podcast | Reinventing Pan-Africanism in the Age of Xenophobia
(videos are listed in the order in which the panels took place)
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Introduction: Sarah Nuttall
Panel One: Africa in Diasporic and Continental Imagination
Xolela Mangcu, "The Idea of Africa in Black South African Political Thought"
Achille Mbembe, "Futures of Pan-Africanism"
Panel 2: Exile, Pan-African and Diasporic Solidarity
Nomboniso Gasa, Mandla Langa, Raimi Gbadamosi
Panel 3: Xenophobia and African Migrants' Experiences (Bureaucracy, Documents and the Police)
Ingrid Palmary, Shose Kessi
Panel Four: The Making of the 'Foreign National'
Niq Mhlongo, Tawana Kupe
Round Table: Redrawing Colonial Boundaries: Pan-Africanism, Nationalism, and Cosmopolitanism
Adam Habib, Gilbert Khadiagala (respondent), Eusebius McKaiser (moderator)
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Panel One: South Africa in the Geopolitics of the Continent
Adekeye Adebajo, Gilbert Khadiagala, Anthony Bizos
Panel Two: The Gateway to Africa? South African Capital in the Continent
Lucy Corkin
AND
Remarks by Moeletsi Mbeki
Panel Three: Africa in the South African Curriculum: Expanding the Boundaries of Knowledge
Michael Neocosmos
Suren Pillay
Concluding Session: The Africa We Want
Address by David Makhura, Premier of Gauteng
Podcast: Achille Mbembe's Public Lecture 'Decolonizing the University'
Achille Mbembe's public lecture 'Decolonizing the University: Five New Directions,' presented at WiSER on 22 April 2015.
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