Teaching Staff
Professor Jacklyn Cock
BA (Hons), PhD (Rhodes)
Professor Emeritus in Sociology and Research Associate in SWOP
Jacklyn Cock is the author of Maids and Madams. A study in the politics of exploitation (1980) and Colonels and Cadres: Gender and Militarisation in South Africa (1991). She is co-editor (with Laurie Nathan) of War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa (1989), and co-editor (with Eddie Koch) of Going Green: People, Politics and the Environment in South Africa (1991). Much of her work has been concerned with issues of violence and inequality in South African society and her current research is on environmental justice. Her most recent works are entitled From Defence to Development, Redirecting Military Resources in South Africa, co-edited with Penny McKenzie (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1998) and Melting Pots and Rainbow Nations (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002) with Alison Bernstein.
Dr Lisa R Brown
BA(Hons)(Cambridge), MA(Sussex),PhD(Cambridge)
Lecturer
Lisa Brown has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, for which she spent one year living in a favela in Northeast Brazil researching poor Afro-Brazilian women s consumption of Brazilian soap operas (telenovelas). Since the PhD she has been based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, first as a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Gender Studies Programme, School of Gender, Anthropology and Historical Studies, and then as a Lecturer in Media Studies in the School of Literary Studies, Media and Creative Arts. She publishes in the areas of gender, media, sexuality subjectivity and embodiment.
Professor David Dickinson
BA (Hons) (Sheffield), Post Graduate Diploma in Economics (Sussex), MPhil (Cambridge), PhD (Cambridge)
Professor
David Dickinson has conducted a range of interdisciplinary studies including work on Japanese investment in the UK, crime and unemployment, and the financing of vocational training internationally. His doctoral thesis, on national identity and economic development, used Nedlac s Workplace Challenge project in the South African plastics industry as a case study. Since 2000 David's research has focused on HIV/AIDS and the world of work. His specialised area is that of workplace peer educators, the subject of a book Changing the Course of AIDS. He is currently researching "AIDS myths" and the response of peer educators to these non-scientific discourses. He also researches the response of traditional healers to HIV/AIDS as part of his interest in popular understandings and responses to the epidemic.
Ms Tessa Dooms
BA (Hons) (Wits)
Lecturer
Tessa Doom's research is primarily positioned in the field of sociology of religion, and in particular the link between religion and sexuality. The title of her MA thesis is:"Reconstructing discourse, deconstructing power and recognising assets at the intersection of religion and adolescent sexual wellbeing". Her other interests include youth culture, health and Pentecostalism in South Africa.
Professor Leah Gilbert
BA, MPH (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem), PhD (Health Sciences, Wits)
Professor of Health Sociology
A member of the academic staff of the University of the Witwatersrand since 1978, Leah Gilbert has been involved in teaching social sciences in a variety of health disciplines including public health, medicine, nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy. Her teaching provided the background for the widely used reader Society, Health and Disease in a Time of HIV/AIDS. She has been instrumental in developing the social sciences component of the Masters of Public Health (MPH), an interdisciplinary MA course titled “HIV/AIDS in Context”, as well as the Sociology of Health & Illness. She has developed and coordinates the new MA in the field of Health Sociology, which is the only such degree offered in South Africa. Her research interests encompass the links between society, health, disease and the health professions, and she has published widely in internationally accredited journals on social aspects of dentistry, the role of pharmacy in primary health care, and medical and health care pluralism. Her current research focuses on the role of health professionals in the response to HIV/AIDS, and the social complexity of adherence to and implementation of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART). These themes are reflected in her latest publications on 'stigma' and the 'illness experience' of patients on ART as well as on 'Gender and HIV/AIDS'.
Ms Lauren Graham
BA, BA (Hons) Wits, MA (Wits)
Wits Plus coordinator and lecturer
Lauren Graham is a Development Sociologist. She received her Masters, which focused on the role that religion and culture plays in shaping health perceptions in Lesotho, with distinction from the University of the Witwatersrand. Lauren coordinates and teaches in the Department's part-time programme. Her services are shared with the Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA) where she is a researcher and Volunteer and Service Enquiry Southern Africa (VOSESA) where she is the Research Manager. Prior to joining the Wits staff, Lauren worked at the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) where she managed national research projects in a range of areas such as civil society capacity, access to the Child Support Grant and community living conditions. Her research interests include youth development, identity, civic engagement, and social networks as well as environmental issues. She is currently pursuing her PhD on youth identity, social networks and engagement in risk behaviour at the University of Johannesburg.
Professor Ran Greenstein
BA, MA (Haifa University, Israel), PhD (UW-Madison, USA)
Associate Professor
The title of Professor Greenstein's PhD dissertation is ''Settlement, resistance and conflict: Class, nation, state and political discourse in South Africa and Palestine/Israel to 1948''. From 1994 to 1997 he worked as a senior researcher with the Education Policy Unit (EPU) at Wits University. Between 1997 and 2001 he was deputy director and acting director of the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE), an applied research NGO. His tasks included research co-ordination, supervision and quality control, as well as procurement of contracts, fund raising, design of research projects, and liaison with field workers, fieldwork contractors and clients. These tasks were performed in a competitive environment with a strong emphasis on quality as well as on meeting deadlines and staying within allocated budgets. He edited The role of political violence in South Africa's democratisation (2003), Comparative perspectives on South Africa (1998), and wrote Genealogies of conflict: Class, identity and state in Palestine/Israel and South Africa (1995) He has published chapters in books and has contributed articles to local and international publications.
Ms Louise Hagemeier
BA (Hons), MA (Wits)
Senior Tutor
Louise Hagemeier is co-ordinator of the specialised first year programme in the department with a specific interest in content and skills teaching in Sociology. She was the winner of the prestigious Faculty of Humanities and Vice Chancellors TeamTeaching award (with Dr Kariuki) in 2003. Her teaching areas include social theory, South African history, poverty, social inequality, health and research methods. She is co-author of X-Kit Undergraduate Sociology (Pearson Education 2006), an innovative introductory Sociology textbook.
Dr Samuel Kariuki
BA (Kenyatta University), MA (Nairobi University, Kenya), Dip. Sales and Marketing (Universal College), PhD (Wits)
Senior Lecturer
Dr Kariuki's PhD research was based on a comparative study of land reform implementation programmes in post-independence Kenya (1963) and post-apartheid Kenya (1994). He has published in this issue on wide range of international journals and popular local publication. His teaching areas are Social Research, Poverty and Inequality, Development Theories. He is a member of the South African Sociological Association and an associate member of the Institute of Commercial Management (ICM) London. He recently held a visiting research fellowship position at the African Studies Centre, Leaden University, Netherlands as part of his 2004 sabbatical leave.
Dr Bridget Kenny
BA (Hons), (Uni. of Chicago) MA, PhD (UW-Madison, USA)
Senior Lecturer
Dr Kenny specialises in research on contingent employment, gender, and the service sector. Recent projects include work on casualisation and subcontracting in food retailing, changing configuration of food commodity chains in Southern Africa, the identity of white female shop workers historically, and changing class formations and identities on the East Rand. Her theoretical focus is on linking productive and reproductive economic spheres to examine how shifting labour market trends impact on workers collective and individual subjectivities. She has a particular interest in shifting relations of class, gender and race. She has authored several articles on these topics in journals such as Critical Sociology, Journal of Southern African Studies, International Review of Social History, Labour, Capital & Society, and The South African Labour Bulletin. Her PhD from the University of Wisconson-Madison was entitled, ''Divisions of Labor, Experiences of Class: Changing Collective Identities of East Rand Food Retail Sector Workers through South Africa's Democratic Transition''. She is presently working on a book manuscript based on her PhD.
Ms Kezia Lewins
BSocSci (UCT), BA (Hons), MA (Wits)
Lecturer
Research Interests: Kezia Lewin's broad research interests are on the salience of race, gender, sexuality, and class in transforming societies. She is currently enrolled for a PhD that examines the transformation of the academic labour market in South Africa, specifically looking at the contested and competing relationships between race-based and gender-based equity in institutions of higher education. She received her Masters degree in 2006 and her Research Report was entitled "How open are our doors? A comparison of academic staff transformation at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand". She has also done research into the effectiveness of employment equity as a state mechanism of redress. She is currently involved in projects looking at the politics of race, and academic activism. Her teaching areas are on the sociology of health and illness; race, gender and the workplace; and qualitative research methodology.
Dr Raji Matshedisho
B SocSc, B SocSc (Hons), PhD (UCT)
Lecturer
Dr Raji Matshedisho qualified in industrial sociology at master's level. His research interests are Disability studies, policing and industrial sociology. He was the 2003 first prize winner in CODESRIA essay competition. He is founding member of the CODESRIA Young Scholars Initiative. He is also a member of the Friends of the Workers Museum. He has previously undertaken research for the Education Policy Unit (UWC), School of Public Health (UCT)/ Institute of Tropical Medicine (Belgium), Nelson Mandela Foundation, and Forced Migration Studies Programme (Wits). He has published locally and internationally on disability and is currently publishing on policing.
Mr Aidan Mosselson
BA, BA (Hons), MA (awaiting graduation) Wits,
Lecturer
Aidan Mosselson completed his MA degree by Research at the beginning of 2009 and is currently awaiting graduation. The title of his dissertation was "Citizens and Exceptions: Illegal Immigration, Citizenship and the State"; the work examines the relationship between illegal immigration, citizenship and nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa and the ways in which this relationship is mediated by the state. The central argument is that the formation of the nation and citizenry relies on the production and exclusion of a social group who cannot be considered part of the nation, in this case those classified as 'illegal immigrants'. The work examines the various strategies and mechanisms that are used to produce and exclude populations and the role the state plays in this process. On a broader level, Aidan's interests lie in the realm of Political Sociology and issues around state power in particular.
Dr. Prishani Naidoo
BA (Wits), BA (Hons), MA (Wits)
Lecturer
Prishani Naidoo's intellectual interests have been shaped by a constant search for ways in which knowledge production and the pursuit of ideas can contribute to effecting change in an unequal and unjust world. This has meant trying to understand the relationship between 'academic' and 'activist' modes of engagement and production, and interrogating the ways in which theory and praxis are understood, unfold and relate to each other. A closely related interest is in the possibilities for non-representational forms of political engagement in late capitalist society. Prishani has published on the South African student movement of the 1990s; higher education transformation in South Africa; the effects of neoliberal policies on labour, labour movements, and other social movements in South Africa and Mauritius; the emergence of new forms of organising under neoliberalism; the delivery of basic services in South Africa; new social movements in South Africa; the global justice movement or anti-globalisation movement; and poverty and 'the making of 'the poor'' in post-apartheid South Africa, the latter being the subject of her dissertation, PHD for the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. She has previously been employed at Khanya College (1998-1999 and 2001-2002), and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (Southern Africa Office - 1999 - 2001), and has been a member of the collective/consultancy, Research & Education In Development (RED), since 2002.
Professor Clifford Odimegwu
BSc (Socio) IMSU (Nig.); MSc and PhD (Demography and Social Statistics) (Ife, Nig); Post-grad Certificate, (Population and International Health) (Harvard) Associate Professor & Co-ordinator, Demography & Population Studies Programme
Research Interests: Demographic Techniques, Population dynamics, gender and reproductive issues. He has published widely on Demography and Population Studies.
Professor Devan Pillay
BA (Unisa), PhD (Univ of Essex)
Associate Professor
Professor Pillay has published extensively on issues relating to Globalization, social movements, civil society, industrial relations, labour history, media and society, contemporary South African politics. His PhD Thesis was on Trade Unions and Alliance Politics in Cape Town. Former (work): Researcher at the SA Labour & Development Research Unit (Saldru), UCT; Writer for The South African Labour Bulletin; Managing Editor of Work In Progress; Director: Social Policy MA programme at UDW; Head of Research at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Director: Policy at Government Communication and Information System (GCIS). He was formerly Vice-President of the Sociology Association of SA; Chairperson of the Global Change and Transformation Research programme at the HSRC, member of Broadcast Monitoring and Complaints of the IBA; member of Deep Mine Research Board; member of the Safety in Mine Research Advisory Committee. Prof Pillay is a member of the Global Labour University steering committee, andin 2008 was Guest Editor of Labour, Capital and Society's special edition on Labour and Development (2007). He also co-edited Labour and the Challenges of Globalisation (2008: Pluto Press); New South African Review 2010: Development or Decline? (Wits University Press) and New South African Review 2011: New Paths, Old Compromises? (Wits University Press).
Dr. Terry-Ann Selikow
BA (Hons; MA; H.Dip.Ed Adults) WITS PhD (University of Alberta)
Lecturer
Terry-Ann Selikow specializes in health sociology. Her work is underpinned by a commitment to using Sociology to understand and challenge inequalities. A central question that guides her work is how do structures constrain and enable humans and how do humans exert agency and resist or reproduce structures of inequality. She uses a Critical Realist Approach whereby both material reality and discourse are equally important in analysis. Using this theoretical framework, her empirical work has focused specifically on sexual health amongst adolescents. She has presented her work at conferences both nationally and internationally. She has been a reviewer for a range of journals including Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health South; South African Review of Sociology; African Health Sciences; AIDS Care; Culture, Health and Sexuality and Sexual Health. Book chapters and journals she has recently published in include Handbook of Gender and Healthcare, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, South African Labour Bulletin, Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and African Health Sciences.She is co-author of ''Society, Health and Disease in a Time of HIV/AIDS.'' She teaches at both the undergraduate and post-graduate level and supervises postgraduate research. In her teaching she has consistently scored above the University average. Her research and teaching are closely inter-linked and her philosophy to education is based on the philosophy education for empowerment through interactive participation.
Professor Roger Southall
BA(Leeds), MA (Manchester), PhD(Birmingham)
Professor and Head of Department
Roger Southall is author of South Africa's Transkei: The political Economy of an 'Independent' Bantustan (1982) and Imperialism or Solidarity? International Labour and South African Trade Unions (1995) and co-author of An African Peace Process: Mandela, South Africa and Burundi (2005). In addition he has edited and co-edited collections and published extensively in international and South African journals. He was previously Professor of Political Studies at Rhodes University before working as Executive Director/Distinguished Research Fellow in Democracy and Governance at the Human Sciences Research Council. His interests lie in the field of African and South African political economy. He is Editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.
Mr Paul Stewart
BA (UCT), BA(Hons) (Ind Soc), BA(Hons) (Phil) (Wits)
Senior Tutor
Paul Stewart returned to academe after a gap of seventeen years and in the past ten has tutored most of the undergraduate courses in Sociology, been largely responsible for the large first year class of around 500 students as tutor co-ordinator and taught the year compulsory sociological theory class. He has published on the teaching of sociology and its history in South Africa. His research in the mining industry has been practically based, collaborating with the national mining industry/university/national Research Foundation Deepmine, Futuremine and Coaltech 2020 projects, initially with SWOP and latterly with the CSIR via Wits Enterprise. Using ethnographic and quantitative methodologies he has done work with the Asvestos Relief across gold , coal and platinum mines. He is busy with an MA he hopes to convert to a PhD on the significance and role of labour time in mining.
Professor Lucien van der Walt
BA (Hons), PhD (Wits)
Associate Professor
Lucien van der Walt is a prize-winning scholar whose research interests lie in (1) labour history, with particular reference to anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and post-colonial world, and questions of transnationality, (ii) the sociology of contemporary labour movements, with particular reference to trade unionism and labour struggles in southern Africa, and (iii) political economy, with particular reference to the neo-liberal restructuring of state policy and public sector reform. He has published on these issues in a wide range of local and international journals, newspapers and bulletins, and in reference works. Besides his chapters in peer-reviewed books, he has published in African Studies, Anarchist Studies, Archiv fur die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit, Capital and Class, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Labor History, Mundos del Trabalho, Politikon, Refractions, Safundi: the Journal of South African and American Studies, and Society in Transition, presented over papers at more than 70 events, and serves on four editorial boards. Lucien has also published over 85 popular articles, in papers such as the South African Labour Bulletin, and has produced several books. He published the acclaimed Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism (with Michael Schmidt 2009, nominated for the CLR James Prize) and (with Steve Hirsch) produced the edited volume Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940: the praxis of class struggle, national liberation and social revolution (2010, Brill). Lucien served as southern African editor for Blackwell's International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution: 1500 to the present (2009). Lucien won the international prize for the best Ph.D. dissertation from Labor History, the pre-eminent journal for historical scholarship in its field in the world, as well as the CODESRIA prize for best African PhD thesis. In between this work, he has been involved in the working class movements, including serving on the executive of the Workers Library and Museum, serving as a media officer for the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and serving as a union educator through the Global Labour University, DITSELA, and the Wits/ NUMSA programme. Nominated for the Vice Chancellors' teaching award, Lucien's supervision and teaching has consistently been ranked in the top 10% at Wits.
Professor Edward Webster
BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (Oxon), BPHIL (York), PhD (Wits)
Professor Emeritus in Sociology and Research Associate in SWOP
Professor Edward Webster's current research interests are in decent work and development. He is the author of Cast in a Racial Mould: Labour process and trade unionism in the foundries (1985). He has edited Essays on Southern African Labour History (1978), Change, Reform and Economic Growth (1978) and co-edited Work and Industrialisation in South Africa (1994). In 2000 he published a book with Glen Adler on Trade Unions and Democratisation in South Africa 1985-1997. During 1995 he was a Fulbright Senior African Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). In 2005 he published (with K Von Holdt) a volume of collected essays, titled Beyond the Apartheid Workplace (UKZN Press,). His latest book (with Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout) is titled, Grounding Globalisation: labour in the Age of Insecurity (Blackwell Publishers, 2008)
Dr Michelle Williams
BA, MA, PhD (University of California, Berkeley)
Senior Lecturer
Michelle Williams received her BA (Political Economy of Industrial Societies and German), MA (Sociology), and PhD (Sociology) from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology and Political Studies at Wits (August 2005-December 2006). Her research and teaching interests include political sociology, social movements, social theory, qualitative research methods, and comparative historical analysis. Her book, The Roots of Participatory Democracy: Democratic Communists in South Africa and Kerala, India (Palgrave, 2008), compares the political projects of the communist parties in South Africa and Kerala during the 1990s. She co-edited South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South (Wits University Press, 2011). She is currently working on a book project with Vishwas Satgar on cooperatives in the global political economy tracing the linkages from consumer markets to producer cooperatives.
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Mrs Ingrid Chunilall
Administrator
Mrs Laura Bloem
Admin Assistant (Postgraduate)
Ms Stephline Johnson
Administrative Secretary (Undergraduate)
Contact Details
Email: sociology@wits.ac.za
Phone: 27 11 717 4440
Fax: 27 11 717 4459
Physical Address
Room 43
2nd Floor
Central Block
East Campus
WITS
Postal Address
Sociology Department
Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050
Johannesburg, 2000
South Africa
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