Research Associates

Dr Theresa Addai-Mununkum

Research fellow in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, UNISA

Dr Theresah Addai-Mununkum is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, College of Humanities and Legal Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where she teaches and engages in research. Her teaching and research areas are: African literature, Literary theory, Masculinities, Gender and Writing, Queer theory, Gender Identity and Sexuality Studies, and Literary and artistic constructions of gender and sex. She is also the Coordinator for Advocacy and Outreach at the Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD) at the University of Cape Coast. Apart from the University of Cape Coast, she has worked as a student Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and also as the Language Coordinator and Administrator (Ghana, Cape Coast Site) for the School for International Training, Vermont. She obtained her PhD in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013 in the USA where she was a Fulbright Scholar.  She obtained her Master of Philosophy degree in English from the University of Cape Coast in 2001. Currently, she is a member of the African Literature Association and the African Studies Association.  Her academic awards include a 2018 ASA Presidential Fellows Award and a 2014 ACLS/African Humanities Program Fellowship. She has been a guest speaker at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, UNISA, and Iowa State University in the USA, and published in Journals such as the West Africa Review, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, and the African Studies Quarterly. her ORCID ID is ORCID ID:0000-0002-9448-9446.

Dr Sibangilizwe Maphosa

Research fellow in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, UNISA

Sibangilizwe Maphosa is currently a Lecturer in the Psychology Department, Faculty of Social Sciences, Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe. He is also a Research Fellow in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair in the College of Human Sciences, UNISA, South Africa. He teaches and supervises dissertations at both undergraduate and post graduate levels with 13 years of university teaching experience. At the departmental level, he chairs the Quality Assurance Teaching and Learning (QATAL) Committee, Community Engagement Committee, Psychology Research and Dissertations Committee, Psychology Students’ Registration with Allied Health Practitioners’ Council of Zimbabwe (AHPCZ) Committee and Psychology Laboratory Committee. He is a Faculty of Social Sciences Committee member for Quality Assurance for Teaching and Learning. He specializes in Community Psychology, Health Psychology and Research Psychology. He has published several paper articles in refereed journals and has attended and presented papers at several national and international conferences. He is also a part time Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences teaching topics on Family, Culture, Socialization, Human Development (Life Cycle) and Group Dynamics. Primary interests are reconciliation, constructions and experiences of trauma and trauma recovery. Understanding violence, trauma in context, victim empowerment and trauma support. Community oriented counseling in war traumatized societies, family building and forgiveness in families.  He is a representative in the University Community Engagement Committee for the Social Sciences Faculty.  He works with prisons in Zimbabwe on psychosocial issues. He is also involved with Children’s Homes around Gweru Urban.

Prof Tiffany Willoughby-Herard

Professor extraordinarius, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, UNISA

Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (Associate Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Irvine and Professor Extraordinarius in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair at University of South Africa) is a Black political scientist who focuses on Black political thought and the material conditions of knowledge production, Black movements, South African historiography; blackness in international relations, diaspora, third world feminisms, decolonizing theory, feminist pedagogy, Black & African feminisms, and racial capitalism/gendered racisms/ sexuality in international relations. Her current work explores cross-generational youth-led political organizing around land return, sexual violence, and colonial legacies in South Africa. She is concerned with political consciousness across generations and creative sites for political education. She is the author of Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability (University of California Press 2015) and of articles in African Identities; Journal of Women Politics, and Policy; PS: Political Science and Politics; Critical Ethnic Studies Association; Frontiers: A Journal of Womens Studies; Abolition Journal;Contemporary; Journal of Contemporary Thought; Politics, Groups and Identities; Race & Class; National Political Science Review; Social Justice; Theory & Event; Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers, among others. Willoughby-Herard is also the co-editor of a new book on Black feminist cultural studies in contemporary South Africa co-edited with Derilene (Dee) Marco and Abebe Zegeye, entitled Sasinda Futhi Siselapha: Black Feminist Approaches to Cultural Studies in South Africa’s Twenty-FiveYears Since 1994 (Africa World Press 2020), and a textbook Theories of Blackness: On Life and Death (Cognella Press 2011). Building intimate and vulnerable spaces for high quality research by under-represented people has required crafting intentional, collaboratively-led, scholar activist formations. Willoughby-Herard is a founding member of the Transnational Black Womxn Scholars of African Politics Research Network with Takiyah Harper-Shipman, Robin Turner, Adom Getachew, and Kira Tait; a founding member of the feminist of color research network LUNAS with Lisa Beard, LaShonda Carter, Khanum Shaikh, Jeanne Scheper, Natalia Molebatsi, Khanum Shaikh, Salvador Zárate, and Deshonay Dozier; and a founding member of the Black Women and Gender Non-Binary research and creative writing group, #InForUs with Onyekachi Ekeogu, Tara Atherley, Desireé Melonas, and Tiffany Caesar. Willoughby-Herard is the Intellectual Wellness Specialist for the Women’s Wellness Garden a digital community for transformation and health founded alongside Joy White, Starlerra Simmons, Kelly Rivas, Sharon Adams, Odunayo Esther Ongunrinu, Ashley Woolard. Such models reflect what Willoughby-Herard has inherited from the radical scholars that fought for space for liberatory histories and “leader-full” movements. She is a Co-Principle Investigator with historian Jessica Millward, lynching scholar LaShonda Carter, and artist scholar and actor Ella Turenne of a Black Digital Humanities online research archive, Activist Studio West: A Digital Repository of Movement Material, that serves as a pathways to doctoral education program for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. These and many other precious places are where and how Willoughby-Herard does her best thinking.  Willoughby-Herard is Humanities Equity Advisor and Special Assistant to the Dean of Humanities on Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence. As President of the 52 year old National Conference of Black Political Scientists Willoughby-Herard and a member of the LGBTQ+ Caucus and the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics, she/they has found space to grow as a poet, an editor, a reader, a mama, a member of a church choir, a teacher, an undergraduate research supervisor, a friend, an ethical and grounded political scientist, and a Black internationalist lesbian feminist who survived.

Dr Blessing Karumbidza
Economic Historian and Development Sociologist – Research Associate, Chief Albert Luthuli Chair, UNISA

Dr Blessing Karumbidza is an African Economic Historian and Development Sociologist currently project managing the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT)’s FOREST21 (www.forest21.org)  programme as well as a rural development consultant at Jonoka Development Solutions. Blessing has a wide range of research interests in rural development sociology and political economy. He reads and write in areas such as; rural social and economic history, development sociology and political economy of development with a focus on institutions of governance: traditional authority, municipal and government interventions, people as agency for development, participatory processes, activism, and civil organisation for change, land and agrarian reform, agriculture led development interventions, climate adaptation and mitigation, asset-based community and economic development models, leadership and capacity building for development, international, global and regional nexus: changing power relations and power balances (with interest in China-Africa relations), and African studies focusing on Africa economic historical perspectives of Africa in the world, and world history. His research under the UNISA Albert Luthuli Chair, focuses on Traditional Authorities in KwaZulu-Natal – where he is trying to answer the question: Why amakhosi are being killed? His work on amakhosi also covers the experiences of women amakhosi in KwaZulu-Natal – contestations, struggles and responses. His publications include articles in the African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development (AJSTID), Africa insight, and Journal of Modern African Studies. He also has chapters in Changing Economic Balances and Integration in Africa Rising (Joel Netshitenzhe and Daniel Maimela, 2017) and African Perspectives on China in Africa (Firoze Manji and Stephen Marks, 2007), as well as several book reviews. Dr Karumbidza is a member of the Economic History Society of Southern Africa, Economic History Association (South Africa), African Economic History Network and the Sociology Association of South Africa.

Dr Shadrack Katuu

Dr Shadrack Katuu (Professor Extraordinarius in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair at University of South Africa) is an information scientist whose career trajectory spans more than two decades and has been anchored at being both an academic researcher as well as a practitioner. As a researcher he was a full-time lecturer at the University of Botswana between 2001 to 2003 and prior to joining the Research Chair unit in 2023 he was a research fellow with UNISA since 2016. In addition, he has been guest lecturer in several universities in various countries for over two decades including Barbados (University of West Indies – Cavehill campus), Canada (University of Toronto), China (Shanghai University and Renmin University), Kenya (Moi University), South Africa (University of Pretoria and University of Witwatersrand), United Arab Emirates (Sorbonne University – Abu Dhabi), and the USA (University of Michigan). Prominent throughout this period is his sustained research output, for over two decades, as part of the InterPARES Project. The research project has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). InterPARES is a multinational and multidisciplinary research project investigating the long-term preservation of trustworthy digital records. His contributions started from 1999 as a graduate research assistant. Between 2001 and 2007, in the second phase of the project, he served as a member of the Advisory Board http://www.interpares.org/ip2/ip2_advisory.cfm Between 2007 and 2012, in the third phase of the project, he was a co-director of the Africa Team http://www.interpares.org/ip3/ip3_itl_partners.cfm During the fourth phase, between 2013 and 2018, he was a member of both the Africa Team http://interparestrust.org/trust/aboutus/africa and the Transnational Team http://interparestrust.org/trust/aboutus/transnational In the current fifth phase that started in 2021 and is scheduled to end in 2026 he is a research collaborator having contributed to the research grant proposal that was awarded 2.4 Million Canadian Dollars by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/results-resultats/recipients-recipiendaires/2020/pg-sp-eng.aspx

In addition to being an academic researcher, he has simultaneously worked as a practitioner with professional roles spanning five regions i.e., Africa (Botswana, South Sudan, and South Africa), the Caribbean (Barbados), Europe (Austria), the Middle East (Iraq), and North America (Canada and the USA). He also has professional certifications in project management (several PRINCE2 certifications), information technology service management (ITIL 4 certification) and information technology governance (COBIT 2019 certification) https://www.credly.com/users/shadrack-katuu/badges The underlying motivation for intersecting scientific and practitioner career paths has been as a conduit facilitating the cross-pollination of knowledge, skills, and experiences across different disciplines as well as global contexts.

He has also provided professional and organizational leadership as an editorial board member in five of the world’s leading archival professional associations' journals, as well as an ad-hoc reviewer for 21 professional journals from six different publishing companies. The editorial board memberships are: American Archivist: Journal of the Society of American Archivist (2019 – 2022), Archivaria: The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists (2019 – present), Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists (2010 – present), Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council of Archives Journal (2003 – 2007), and Journal of the South African Society of Archivists (2011 – present). Further, he has contributed to records and archives standards generation in South Africa (2005-2009, Kenya (2019-present) and the international level (2005 – present).

 His academic and practitioner endeavors over the two decades have resulted in several awards. In 2018 he received the outstanding reviewer award for the Records Management Journal by Emerald Publishers. In 2019, he received the Emerald Publishers Highly Recommended Award for an article. In 2022 his book chapter won the inaugural CIPIT professional writing award https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Colleges/Human-Sciences/News-&-events/Articles/First-prize-for-African-writing-contest-awarded-to-a-Unisan  Also in 2019, he was admitted as a Chartered Member of the Records and Information Management Professionals Australasia (RIMPA Global) https://www.rimpa.com.au/about-us/our-people/life-members/