People at WISER
Professor and Director
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literature and Director of WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) in Johannesburg, South Africa. For many years she taught the Fall semester in the English and African and African American Studies departments at Yale and Duke Universities. She is...
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Professor Achille Mbembe, born in Cameroon, obtained his Ph.D in History at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989 and a D.E.A. in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris). He was Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, New York, from 1988-1991, a Senior Research...
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Keith is a Professor and Deputy Director at Wiser, and one of the editors of the Journal of African History. He writes about the cultural and economic history of South Africa, particularly the gold mining industry,...
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Shireen is a Professor of Politics at Wits. She has been seconded to WISER for a period of three years from the Department of Political Studies. She is co-editor of many books and author of Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (2006), which won the...
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Jonathan Klaaren currently teaches, researches, and writes in the areas of human rights, law, and sociology, having written over forty peer-reviewed publications and co-written several books. He has supervised 7 doctoral dissertations and 5 at masters level. His current research interests are in...
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Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at Wits and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Over the last two decades, she has pioneered research on global, oceanic and transnational forms of literary and cultural history that seek to understand Africa’s place in the...
moreAssociate Professor
Hlonipha Mokoena is currently an Associate Professor at WISER and Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities. Before June 2015 she worked in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual and has a...
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Pamila Gupta is Associate Professor at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Columbia University. Her research explores Lusophone (post)colonial links and...
moreAssociate Professor
Richard Pithouse is an Associate Professor at WiSER. He was formerly a senior researcher in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University. His current academic interests are focussed on political theory, popular struggles and urban studies. He has been a regular contributor to the media over...
moreSenior Researcher
Victoria Collis Buthelezi holds a joint appointment at PARI (Public Affairs Research Institute) and WiSER, dividing her time between both Institutes, as part of an exciting new collaboration. She will also lead the South African programme of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s recently launched...
moreVisiting Senior Researcher
Nolwazi Mkhwanazi is a medical anthropologist who is interested in issues relating to gender and the politics of reproduction. She received her PhD from Cambridge University. Nolwazi teaches courses in the anthropology of medicine and the body; medical anthropology; and ethnographic writing and...
moreSenior Researcher
Sarah is a Senior Researcher at WiSER, and holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. Her research is on histories of childhood, sexuality, and medicine in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Africa. Funded by a prestigious, five-year Research Career Advancement Fellowship from the...
moreFinancial Manager
Adila Deshmukh joined WISER in June 2004 after having pursued a fulfilling career in the tourism industry for ten years, promoting and selling Southern Africa. At WISER, her focus is on financial management and she works closely with staff, doctoral fellows, visitors and writing fellows. Adila...
moreSenior Administrator
Najibha Deshmukh joined WISER in September 2002. Before joining WISER, Najibha worked in a number of positions at the University, including at Wits TV, the Faculty of Humanities, the School of Human and Community Development and, for a short period , the office of the Dean. She has completed...
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