I’ve alternated periods of employment as a researcher, with independent work as an artist and curator, along with lecturing and devising courses at universities. I’m currently in late-2025 artist-in-residence, a role which combines art and research, with EthicsLab at Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town. See entries for this position here: EthicsLab AIR.

My previous research post, from 2021 – 2023, was with HUMA, the Institute for Humanities in Africa at UCT, where I was a research fellow with the Future Hospitals team, investigating the impact of emerging technologies in healthcare in Africa (see posts about that position). My art-research project in fulfilment of that post is documented both here on this site under the exhibition title AIAIA – Aesthetic Interventions in Artificial Intelligence in Africa and separately at the website Bone Flute (the title of the artwork I produced).

Before that, I worked with senior UCT academics Robert Morrell and Vanessa Watson on an international research project into ‘Southern Theory’, called Global Arenas of Knowledge, which took place across South Africa, Brazil and Australia. I spent a year or two interviewing researchers at the now-defunct Energy Research Centre at UCT, developing a portrait of this institute which contributed at a high level to local and international policies on climate change. The paper ‘Southern Agency: Navigating Local and Global Imperatives in Climate Research‘ (2018) published by the journal Global Environmental Politics (MIT Press) was one output.

My first postdoctoral research post was with the African Centre for Cities at UCT as a Max-Planck fellow from 2012 – 2013, where I was a member of the Public Culture CityLab, engaging with the City of Cape Town’s bylaws and working with activist group The Social Justice Coalition. See posts about that position.

My PhD thesis drew on research across multiple domains, from the history of the appropriate technology movement, and science and technology studies, to interventionist art, critical design and activist practices, to interrogate the field of ‘design for the developing world’. My thesis ‘Radical Plumbers and PlayPumps – Objects in development‘ (2011) was the result.

For my Masters degree in Interactive Telecommunications at New York University, I combined personal experience of street-level activism for protest with research into creative means of resistance to produce my thesis work Suited for Subversion (2002). I started conducting research to make artworks and write essays as an undergraduate studying Fine Art and English at the University of Cape Town.

Quick links

EthicsLab Artist-In-Residence
Future Hospitals Research Fellowship at HUMA
Global Arenas of Knowledge Research Post
African Centre for Cities Research Fellowship