Co-Director:  Fatima Seedat

Fatima Seedat is Associate Professor and Head of Department of African Feminist Studies at UCT, and holds a PhD in Islamic Law from McGill University. Before arriving at UCT, she coordinated the flagship Masters programme in Gender, Religion and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).

Fatima studies and teaches at the intersections of sexuality, law and religion, specialising in Muslim feminist readings of gendered legal subjectivity. She also teaches African feminism and feminist decolonial research methodologies and design. Fatima is published in local and international journals on religion, sexuality and gender, specifically feminist approaches to Islam, queering the study of Islam, militant Muslim masculinity and feminist readings of Islamic law.

Fatima was amongst the first cohort of students accepted for the Masters in Gender and Transformation at the African Gender Institute at its inception, returned to teach in 2017 and took on leadership in 2021. Her fellowships have included the British Council Chevening Scholarship which she held at the Human Rights Law Center, University of Nottingham.

Prior to her venture into academia Fatima worked in local and international NGO and government sectors, namely, Equitas Human Rights Foundation (Canada), Women Living Under Muslim Laws (UK), the Commission on Gender Equality, the Department of International Relations (South Africa), and UN Women Afghanistan.

Some key community projects that Fatima has co-created are Shura Yabafazi (2001), and the Family Eidgah (2004). She is an activist-scholar committed to gender-based transformation in African practices of Muslim family law and religious authority. Most recently, Fatima’s work has been centered on Muslim Family Law reform in South Africa where she is part of the Muslim Personal Law Network (of women scholars, activists and professionals working collectively since 2016), which is closely affiliated to the international network Musawah.

Amongst her publications is a book that fulfils a dream begun in 2004 when she was part of the first Family Eid Gah in Durban; “The Women’s Khutbah Book”, co-authored with Prof Sa’diyya Shaikh gathers the wisdom of more than 21 khatibas to produce a virtual minbar guided by women’s experiences of spirituality, agency and justice.

Fatima is principal investigator on the Legal Experience Project funded by an NRF Thuthuka Grant and focused on gendered legal subjectivity in Muslim marriage and divorce law in South Africa. http://www.agi.uct.ac.za/agi-projects-legal-experience-the-project-team