It’s been a good month for Politics
- Political Studies Depart
The Political Studies Department celebrated staff and students who made an impact in their field and society.
Dr Siphiwe Dube, multi/interdisciplinary academic background in Religion Studies, Gender Studies, and Political Studies, was recently promoted to Associate Professor.
Student highlights
Busisiwe Innocentia Mndebele went from serving meals to serving major grad vibes! She officially graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies, proving that hustle and ambition can take you anywhere.
Prizes
A number of our students were awarded highly competitive external prizes. PhD student and UNZA Lecturer, Janet Mundando, has been awarded a prestigious SSR Next Gen 2025-2026 Doctoral Research Fellowship Award.
New PhD student, Yara Pedro Nova, who recently joined the Department, won a prestigious CAPSI-Mastercard Fellowship to conduct research on development, the state and the non-profit sector in Mozambique.
PhD student Abdirizak Muhumed has been awarded a Harry Frank Guggenhein African Fellows Award for emerging African scholars studying violence or related issues on the African continent.
Lea Elsje Bonthuys was awarded the Yusuf Dadoo Prize for the best undergraduate student in Political Studies from the Ebrahim Foundation.
The Department also had a strong 2024 Honours cohort, with Sihle Mazibu winning the Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed Prize for best overall honours student as well as the Joe Ebrahim Prize for best honours dissertation. She was awarded the latter alongside Tintswalo Chauke, who wrote a similarly excellent honours dissertation.
Publications
Dr Dineo Skosana (SWOP & Politics) recently held a book launch for her excellent new book, No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa which was a panel discussion with Adv. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Ms Mbonwa. Former Wits PhD student and current postdoctoral fellow, Dr Albert Sharra (Edinburgh & Wits Politics), has two edited books coming out. One is with Jimmy Kainja and Anthony Mavuto Gunde on The BBC’s Legacy in Africa: Continuities and Change and a second is on Technologies and Media Production Cultures: A Global South Perspective, with Ufuoma Akpojivi.
Our doctoral cohort have been writing and publishing furiously. PhD student Lwando Majikijela’s article ‘Simon and I and the prison love letters of Tseko Simon Nkoli as a mode of queer vulnerability and resistance’ was published in Safundi. PhD student Mpho Tladi’s article titled ‘Antagonistic politics and coalitions: South Africa’s local to national landscape’ was published in Politikon. Recent PhD graduate Dr Palesa Nqambaza has a chapter in the book, Decoloniality in Gender Discourse and Praxis: A view from the Margins which will be coming out soon!
The Department’s students do not just publish in scholarly journals, they are also driving popular discourse. Politics PhD student, Mhlangabezi Mbala, along with Nicky Roberts and Refilwe Thobejane published an article in the Daily Maverick titled ‘Northern Cape’s education crisis demands urgent action to fix disheartening matric results.’
Lectures and Events
The Department have a new seminar series called Decolonising Gender: Histories, Resistances and Futures, which is being spearheaded by Dr Leyya Hoosen. The inaugural seminar was held on the 15th of April, when Shinta Jennifer Ayebazibwe gave a seminar titled “Land Reform and Sustainable Ecology: Lessons from Lesbian Land Management in South Africa.”
Dr Ayesha Omar, who is currently undertaking a British Academy International Fellowship at SOAS, University of London held her first book launch at Istanbul University in Turkey on the 23rd of April. The book published with Cambridge University Press is entitled: The Pluralistic Frameworks of Ibn Rushd and Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im. Earlier in the month she presented a talk on the Anti-Colonial Liberalism of ZK Matthews at the Global Intellectual History Seminar Series at Cambridge University.
The Afrobarometer Project held a workshop in April for our Research Methods cohort. The Afrobarometer team were really impressed by their critical thinking and initiative taking. This is a part of a new collaboration that Dr Nicole Beardsworth is driving with the Afrobarometer Project, to help students with skills development for mixed methods research. Andiswa Motsa, a third-year Politics student from 2024 attended the Afrobarometer summer school at UCT in January and won a prize for best methods. The paper she wrote will soon be published by Afrobarometer!
The Department also had a busy first semester on the Everything Everywhere All at Once Project, with a seminar by Professor Joel Quirk on how to write your postgraduate proposal, while on the 17th of April, Professor Srila Roy gave a seminar lecture on applying for your first academic job at the Humanities Graduate Centre. On the 8th of May, Professor Alf Gunvald Nilsen gave a lecture titled “Integrating your fieldwork into your postgraduate dissertation.” We hosted a great research seminar on 10 April given by Dr Alex Dyzenhaus (UCT) titled “The More Things Change: Race, Segregation and Land Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa.”
On Tuesday 8 April, The Wits Centre for Diversity Studies & the Innovation Foundation for Democracy held a seminar on Zoom titled ‘Who Speaks for the Afrikaner’ which included Sean Jacobs, Hannelie Marx-Knoetze, Siphiwe Dube and Cobus van Staden as speakers.
Finally, in March, the Department launched a podcasting group called The Icon’s Corner under the leadership of Dr Leyya Hoosen. On the 7th-9th of April, the group took part in the Wits Doctoral Academy’s ‘Framing and Planning’ sessions where they enthusiastically interviewed WDA fellows on their PhD research projects. The podcast is set to launch soon!