WISER Seminar Papers

WISER is very pleased to host the Wits Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities. The presentations for the remainder of the current academic semester are listed below.

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, and the past papers of the current semester, is available here. A printable version of the seminar schedule for the current year is available here.

  • The WISH seminar will continue to be held on-line for the foreseeable future; for the details of the Zoom meetings, please sign up for email notices at https://wiser.wits.ac.za/mail.
  • Participants must read the paper prior to the seminar.
  • The paper will typically only be available on the Friday preceding the seminar.
  • Date Author/s Title
    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
    The Bitcoin Revolution : Trump, the Paypal mafia and the overturning of Dodd Frank.
    Monday, 1 September, 2025 - 16:00
    • Sara
    • Dezalay
    Lawyering Imperial Encounters: Negotiating 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
    • Deborah
    • James
    Clawing Back : redistribution in precarious times
    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