Meet the JIAS Advisory Board
In 2020, a new Advisory Board (AB) was appointed to provide oversight and strategic guidance on the mandate and activities of JIAS. Led by the former President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. Kgalema Motlanthe, members of the AB are drawn from various academic disciplines and sectors of society from South Africa and abroad. They include physicists, engineers, mathematicians, historians, novelists, poets, social scientists, and business and social entrepreneurs. The University of Johannesburg is immensely grateful that they have agreed to dedicate their precious time to provide their expertise, wisdom, leadership and vision to JIAS. The members of the AB are the following:
Meet the JIAS Professors
Professor Chris Brink
Professor Chris Brink
Professor Chris Brink served as Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University in the UK from 2007 till 2016. He was a Board member of the Russell Group, as well as the N8, the partnership of eight research-intensive universities in the North of England, which he also chaired. Previously he had served as a Board member of Universities UK (where he chaired the Student Policy Network), the national Equality Challenge Unit (also as Co-Chair), the national Quality Assurance Agency, JISC (the national digital services provider), the Advisory Committee on Leadership, Governance and Management of HEFCE, the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, and various regional Boards. Currently he serves on the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong, where he chairs the implementation group for the 2020 Research Assessment Exercise.
Professor Julia Gallagher
Professor Julia Gallagher
Julia Gallagher is a Professor in African Politics. Her research explores citizens’ conceptions of statehood and state-society relations, combining political, social, aesthetic and psychoanalytic theory with extensive fieldwork. She has written on UK-African relations, Images of Africa and Zimbabwean conceptions of the state in relation to the wider world. Julia leads an ERC-funded project on architecture and statehood in Africa. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg, a member of the Editorial Board of African Affairs and a member of the Advisory Board of the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies, University of Bradford. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Professor Vincent Maphai
Professor Vincent Maphai
Vincent Maphai is the chairman of Discovery Foundation and a non-executive Board member of the Discovery Holdings. Formerly he was Chairman of BHP Billiton, Southern Africa, and executive director of the South African Breweries. Professor Maphai joined the private sector in 1998 after an academic career spanning more than two decades. He taught locally at the Universities of Transkei, Witwatersrand, Western Cape, Cape Town and Pretoria. He holds degrees from the Universities of Natal, UNISA and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He also participated in the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. The University of Pretoria awarded him a degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa in 2007. He has held various teaching and research fellowships at institutions abroad, including Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford. Among various public policy roles, he chaired the Council of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, was appointed Chairman of the Presidential Review Commission by President Mandela, and served as Chairman of the South African Broadcasting Corporation by President Mbeki.
Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor, founding Head of Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) and currently Acting Executive Director of the Change Management Unit (CMU) in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He is also the founder of the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN) based in at the University of South Africa. He is a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated social scientist; a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf); a Fellow of African Studies Centre (ASC) in the Netherlands; and a Research Associate at the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at The Open University in the United Kingdom. Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni has published over a hundred publications and his major publications include The Ndebele Nation: Reflections on Hegemony, Memory and Historiography (Amsterdam & Pretoria: Rosenberg Publishers & UNISA Press, 2009); Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist? Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Postcolonial State (Oxford & Bern: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2009); Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism? Rethinking Contemporary Politics in Zimbabwe (Oxford & Bern: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2011); Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, June 2013); Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2013); Nationalism and National Projects in Southern Africa: New Critical Reflections (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2013); Bondage of Boundaries and Identity Politics in Postcolonial Africa: The ‘Northern Problem’ and Ethno-Futures (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2013); Mugabeism? History, Politics and Power in Zimbabwe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, August 2015); Decolonizing the University, Knowledge Systems and Disciplines (North Carolina, Carolina Academic Press, April 2016); The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and Politics of Life (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, March 2016); Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe: Politics, Power and Memory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; and Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (London & New York: Routledge, July 2018).
Professor Farid Esack
Professor Farid Esack
Farid Esack is a Muslim Theologian who cut his teeth in the South African struggle for liberation. He has published on Islam, Gender, Liberation Theology and Qur’anic Hermeneutics. The author of the seminal work on Islamic Liberation, The Qur’an, Liberation & Pluralism, Esack has taught at several universities across the globe. Before moving to the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies he was Professor in the Study of Islam at the University of Johannesburg until his mandatory retirement. Prior to that he was Professor of Contemporary Islam at Harvard University. He is a former President of the International Qur’anic Studies Association. In 2018 he was presented with the Order of Luthuli (Silver), South Africa’s highest national award, for “his brilliant contribution to academic research and to the fight against race, gender, class and religious oppression”.
Professor Fazil Moradi
Professor Fazil Moradi
Fazil Moradi is a visiting associate professor at Faculty of Humanities, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg; associate researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences; and affiliated scholar at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center—CUNY. He also works with medical scientists at the University of Gothenburg, studying the lasting impacts of chemical weapons. Moradi is the convener of the Actuvirtual Symposium and among his recent publications are: Public Culture(2022); Palgrave Macmillan(2022); Critical Arts(2021); British Medical Journal(2020);Praesens Verlag(2020); Critical Studies(2019).
Meet the JIAS Team
The day to day running of JIAS is overseen by the staff led by the director, Dr Bongani Ngqulunga. The staff members are the following:
Dr Bongani Ngqulunga
Director of JIAS
Dr Bongani Ngqulunga
Director of JIAS
Bongani Ngqulunga is director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), which is based at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He lectures courses on politics, government and state craft in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and also serves currently as Special Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg. Ngqulunga’s scholarship focuses on the history, politics and political thought of the African nationalist movement in South Africa from the late 19th century to the present; political power, government and state craft; as well as political biography. Ngqulunga has published extensively on these subjects, including most prominently his book, The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme (Penguin, 2017), which has won numerous book awards, including the 2018 Alan Paton Prize—South Africa’s most prestigious literary prize.
Prior to joining the University of Johannesburg, Ngqulunga worked in the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa for more than a decade during which he occupied numerous senior positions, including serving simultaneously as Chief of Staff and Spokesperson of the President of the Republic of South Africa. He was also a Head of the Governance Unit in the Policy Coordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) division. Ngqulunga serves on several prestigious boards of public institutions, including being a member of the governing Council of the Robben Island Museum, which is a premier national monument as well as a World Heritage Site. He also serves currently as chairperson of the Social and Human Sciences Sector of the South African National Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). From 2018 to 2022, he was a member of the Board of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. In addition, he served for several years in the Board of the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI).
Ngqulunga studied at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Brown University in the United States where he obtained his PhD.
Ms Emelia Kamena
Manager: Facilities and Operations
Ms Emelia Kamena
Manager: Facilities and Operations
Ms Emelia Kamena who manages all operational projects at JIAS, also oversees the running of facilities and general maintenance. Ms Kamena completed her Honours degree at the University of Johannesburg and she is studying towards her Master’s degree.
Mrs Vanessa Miller
Manager: Marketing, Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Mrs Vanessa Miller
Manager: Marketing, Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Mrs Vanessa Miller, who is responsible for managing all marketing activities at JIAS holds a degree and B.com Honours in Marketing Management from the University of Johannesburg. Mrs Miller also organises events and manages stakeholder relations.