Fiona C. Ross
Chair
Fiona C. Ross is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her work has focused on questions of post-apartheid redress. Currently, she heads an extended research programme that explores the understanding and constitution of life through a focus on "The First Thousand Days of Life", an emergent interdisciplinary paradigm.
Fanny Chabrol
Fanny Chabrol holds a PhD in Sociology and is a research fellow at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Her research focuses on infectious diseases and access to healthcare in public hospitals in Africa, the politics of health reform, and Africa-China health cooperation, including through the building of new hospitals. More broadly, she is interested in the political economy of health, global health and health infrastructures in Africa and beyond, in the present and the future.
Faisal Garba
Dr Faisal Garba is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the co-convener of the University's Global Studies Programme and heads the South African team of the South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub, a research project of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). He serves on the editorial board of the Contemporary Journal of African Studies. His research and teaching interests include inequality and migration, social movements, globalisation and historical sociology.
Marissa Mika
Marissa Mika is a writer, historian-ethnographer, and academic. Her scholarship examines the past and future of science, medicine, and technology. She has worked primarily in eastern and southern Africa on the techno-politics of global health. She was the founding Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Assistant Professor at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda and a Research Fellow on Chronic Disease in Africa at University College London, UK. Drawn to interdisciplinary academic spaces, she holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, an MHS in International Health from Johns Hopkins, and a BA in Development Studies from UC Berkeley.
Ryan Mark Nefdt
Ryan Mark Nefdt is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His research focuses on language, AI and cognitive science, as well as emerging political theory in the Global South. Among his published work are articles in journals and books across philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. He is the co-author of the forthcoming updated Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the Philosophy of Linguistics and co-editor of the Palgrave Mcmillan volume The Philosophy and Science of Language: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2020).
Akin Iwilade
Akin Iwilade is a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His current research interests are in three areas: the shifting geographies of covert gang networks that appear to be exploring innovative migratory routes from West Africa to Europe; multiple citizenship questions that emerge out of the informal production and distribution of fuel in the Gulf of Guinea area and how it impacts on notions of statehood; and lastly, the deployment of blackness and middle-class youth identity formation in Africa and its diasporas. He taught International Relations at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria and African Politics at the University of Leeds, UK.
Tomohiro Akiyama
Tomohiro Akiyama is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Japan, a researcher at the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, and a Visiting Professor at Kobe Institute of Computing and Tokyo City University, Japan. He is also a COO of KAIQUA Ltd., Japan and an executive advisor to a variety of companies. He holds a Dsc in Hydrology from Nagoya University. He has undertaken many inter- and transdisciplinary projects with fieldworks in various countries in Asia and Africa. Akiyama considers Integral Studies as a means to tackle a variety of problems with an infinitely broad framework of recognition.
Rachel Adams
Rachel Adams is a senior research specialist in the Science and Society programme of the Human Sciences Research Council's Impact Centre, South Africa. Her research lies at the intersection of philosophy, gender, technology, law and race. Adams was previously the Senior Researcher for Civil and Political Rights at the South African Human Rights Commission and completed a post-doctorate at the Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, UK. She serves on several advisory panels to government and international organisations. She is editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights, and author of Transparency: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2020).
Thuto Thipe
Thuto Thipe is a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her primary fields of study are land tenure, African cities, local governance systems, race and racial formation, and feminist studies. She earned her doctorate in History and African American Studies from Yale University, US; she also holds degrees in Gender Studies and Political Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and Macalester College, US.