The Research Team

Yaliwe Clarke – Co-Principal Investigator – AGI, University of Cape Town

Yaliwe is the Interim Director of the AGI and a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.  Since 2000 she has interacted with a wide range of women's rights activists and peace-builders/conflict resolution practitioners in over 11 countries in Africa.  She is currently a Phd candidate in Social Development at the University o Cape Town. Her Phd research investigates the micro-politics of women’s ‘peace activism’ in northern Uganda. She is also interested in notions of respectable femininity, marriage, pleasure, and (hetero)sexuality in Zambia.

Sara Matchett - Co-Principal Investigator – CTDPS,  University of Cape Town

Sara is Head of the CTDPS at the University of Cape Town. She is also an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and the Regional Director of the Fitzmuarice Institure for Africa and India. Her teaching profile centres around practical and academic courses which include, voice, acting, theatre-making, applied drama/theatre, and performance analysis. She is especially interested in trans-disciplinary modes of creating.  Her research explores the body as a site for generating images for the purpose of performance making and specifically focuses on investigating the relationship between breath and emotion, and breath and image, in an attempt to make performance that is inspired by a biography of the body. As co-founder and Artistic Director of The Mothertongue Project women’s arts collective, Sara has experience in the field of theatre in South Africa, Africa and internationally as a theatre-maker, performer, director and facilitator.

Yasmin Gunaratnum – Academic Lead – Goldsmiths, University of London

Yasmin Gunaratnam is a Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths (University of London). She has an interest in critical race, disability, migration and feminist scholarship and in qualitative and participatory methods. Yasmin’s publications include 'Researching Race and Ethnicity: methods, knowledge and power' (2003, Sage), ‘Death and the Migrant’ (2013, Bloomsbury Academic) and the co-authored book ‘Go Home? The Politics of Immigration Controversies’ (2017, Manchester University Press). Yasmin has edited nine collections and writes poems.  She is an editor of Feminist Review.

Bev Orton –Consultant – University of Hull

Bev is a Fellow in Criminology at the University of Hull, an Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She is a consultant on ‘Participatory Theatre and the Production of Equality amongst Sex Workers in South Africa for the GlobalGRACE research project. Her area of research is criminology, gender, restorative justice and conflict and political struggle. Her latest book is Women, Activism and apartheid South Africa. I have worked extensively in areas of film, theatre and visual studies.

Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki – Early Career Researcher – University of Cape Town

 Phoebe is a post-doctoral research fellow on the GlobalGRACE project housed at the AGI and the CTDPS – University of Cape Town as well as the NGO – SWEAT. She holds a PhD in Gender, Media and Culture from the Graduate Gender Studies Programme – Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Phoebe was also a lecturer at Utrecht University and taught on the Graduate Gender Studies Programme, feminist theory and feminist research methods. Her research interests are in critical race, gender, sexuality as well as  decolonial thought and praxis. Phoebe has also worked for a number of years in various fields including gender, HIV and public health with agencies such UNDP, UNAIDS and WHO on a regional (Sub-Saharan Africa) and global focus.