Guest lecturer: Prof. Lyn Ossome, Makerere University, Uganda
Discussant: Assoc. Prof. Ruchi Chaturvedi, University of Cape Town (UCT) Dept. of Sociology
About the speaker: Lyn Ossome is an Associate Professor at, and the Director of, the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR). Previously, she was Associate Professor of Political Studies at Wits University, Senior Research Fellow at MISR, and Visiting Presidential Professor at Yale University. Prof. Ossome is the current President of the Council for Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) and also serves on the editorial boards of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and Feminist Africa; and the boards of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). Her books include Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya’s Transitions to Democracy: States of Violence (2018), the co-edited volume LabourQuestions in the Global South (2021), and a forthcoming monograph titled Democracy’s Subjections: Colonial Modernity and the Gendered Subject of Violence.
About the discussant: Ruchi Chaturvedi is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCT. Her research focuses on cultures of democracy, popular politics, and political violence in India and South Africa. The interface of race and caste, and the histories of transcontinental dialogues against racial thinking and caste are her other ongoing areas of inquiry. Her recent key publications include Violence of Democracy: Interparty Conflict in South India (Duke University Press, 2023) and (with Victoria Collis-Buthelezi) "Race and Caste: Hierarchy and Universality" (Critical Times special issue 2025).