WISER Seminar Papers

  • WISER's TRUST seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon from 16:00 - 17:00 SA time during the teaching semester. Forthcoming seminars are available here, and past events are detailed in our archive.
  • Please register on Zoom in advance of the meeting on this link.
  • Participants should please read the paper (below) prior to the seminar, which is typically available by the Friday preceding the seminar.


WISER, and its predecessor institutions the Institute for Advanced Study and the African Studies Institute, have hosted similar seminars that date back to the late 1960s. The archive of those events is also available on the WISER web site at http://wiser.wits.ac.za.
Date Presented by Title
Monday, 28 July, 2025 - 16:00
  • Hannah
  • Dawson
 Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins
Monday, 4 August, 2025 - 16:00
  • Aditi
  • Sahasrabuddhe
 Bankers' Trust : How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse
Monday, 11 August, 2025 - 16:00
  • Efthimios
  • Karayiannides
 Beyond Mont Pèlerin: South African Physicist Bankers in a World Without Money
Monday, 18 August, 2025 - 16:00
  • Janine Patricia
  • Santos
 ‘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, 25 August, 2025 - 16:00
  • Keith
  • Breckenridge
 Trustless Money : the virtues, limits and dangers of crypto currencies
Monday, 1 September, 2025 - 16:00
  • Sara
  • Dezalay
 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, 15 September, 2025 - 16:00
  • Niall
  • Reddy
 The Minerals Energy Complex in South Africa: an Empirical Debunking
Monday, 22 September, 2025 - 16:00
  • Marielle
  • Debos
 The Biometric Promise
 : Technology, Market, and Elections in Africa
Monday, 29 September, 2025 - 16:00
  • Tunde
  • Okunoye
 Understanding Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) through Nigeria's NIBSS NIP real time payments layer.
Monday, 6 October, 2025 - 16:00
  • Fatima
  • Moolla
 Rwandan Notaries as State Intermediaries
Monday, 13 October, 2025 - 16:00
  • Keren
  • Weitzberg
 Single source of truth systems in Kenya—Huduma and Maisha Nambas
Monday, 20 October, 2025 - 16:00
  • Teo
  • Zidaru
 Mis/trust, language, and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in global digital economies
Monday, 27 October, 2025 - 16:00
  • Rita
  • Kesselring
 Extraction, Global Commodity Trade, and Urban Development in Zambia's Northwestern Province
Monday, 3 November, 2025 - 16:00
  • Tara
  • Weinberg
 African Land buying Syndicates in early 20th century KZN