IHRE Faculty

The IHRE program is co-taught by lecturers from Wits and U.S. institutions. Below are biographies of professors in the 2008 IHRE Program.

LAWS2012: Human Rights: Perspectives from the Discipline (Core Course):

Professor Cathi Albertyn:  Cathi Albertyn is a professor of law at the University of Witwatersrand. Prof. Albertyn has a BA LLB from UCT and a Ph.D. from Cambridge. She trained as an attorney and practiced as a human rights lawyer from 1989 to 1992. She then joined the Centre for Applied Legal Studies to start the Gender Research Project. She is currently a commissioner at the Law Reform Commission. Cathi Albertyn is a constitutional lawyer with a particular specialization in equality, human rights and social justice, and the transformation of the legal profession and the judiciary.

SOSS2003: Engagement in Human Rights (Internship):

Ayesha Kajee: Previously Program Head for Democracy and Political Party Systems at the South African Institute of International Affairs, Ayesha is the IHRE program director and teaches the Engagement in Human Rights course. She has been an educator in both secondary and tertiary spheres, working in South Africa, U.S., and Britain. Her research interests include human rights, education, gender, entrepreneurship, eco tourism, and politics. Recent publications include a book chapter on “The Regional and International Dimensions of the Crisis in Darfur” published in March 2007 in Peace in the Balance: The Crisis in Sudan, by the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation (IJR).

Dr. Thomas Cushman: Thomas Cushman is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. His areas of study include human rights, comparative sociology, genocide, and the sociology of culture. He is the author of numerous books and articles on topics ranging from cultural dissidence in Russia, to freedom of expression, to the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iraq. His most recent publications include A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, editor (University of California Press, 2005), Terror, Iraq and the Left: Christopher Hitchens and His Critics, edited with Simon Cottee (New York University Press, 2008), The Religious in Response to Mass Atrocity, edited with Thomas Brudholm (forthcoming in 2009 with Cambridge University Press); and the Routledge International Handbook of Human Rights (forthcoming).  He is the Founding editor of Human Rights Review, and the founding editor, former editor-in-chief and current editor-at-large of "The Journal of Human Rights."  He was an Associate at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University in 2002-2003, Siskind Visiting Professsor of Sociology and Internet Studies at Brandeis University in 2002, Visiting Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2005, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar Academic Core Session on "International Law and Human Rights" chaired by Lloyd Cutler and Sir Richard Goldstone. He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Professor Cushman was recently selected as the recipient of the Saint Michael's College Academic Hall of Fame Award, which is given to recognize those graduates whose scholarship has exemplified the academic, cultural, and civic scholarly goals of the College.

Third Block Electives

WSOA2004: “Human Rights and the Media”:

Dr. Jesse Shipley:  Jesse Shipley is an Assistant Professor of Africa and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at Bard College.  He received his B. A. from Brown University; and his M. A., Ph.D., Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago 2003. Areas of interest include Ghana and the African Diaspora; global racial politics and race; British colonialism, postcolonial states, and national citizenship; mass media, popular culture and performance. Awards: Fulbright-IIE Dissertation Grant, Accra, Ghana (1998–99); Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant for Dissertation Research (1998–2000) Accra, Ghana; Residential Predoctoral Fellowship, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies, University of Virginia (2001–03). Publications include: "From Visuality to Postcolonial African Politics: An Interview with Mohamed Saidou N'Daou."  In Public Culture 2004; "'The Best Tradition Goes On': Popular Theater and Televised Soap in Neoliberal Ghana" (in Neoliberalism and Social Reproduction in Africa; University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); Coauthor, "African/Diaspora History: W. E. B. DuBois and Pan-Africanism in Ghana" (in Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in honor of Adu Boahen (Africa World Press, 2003);  (Bard 2003-2008, Haverford 2008-   )

Dr. Jyoti Mistry: Jyoti Mistry is Associate Professor in the Wits School of the Arts, where she heads the Television Program. She earned her B.A. at Wits and holds M.A.and Ph.D. degrees in Cinema Studies from New York University. Her extensive filmography includes, most recently, Kgafela oa Magogodi’s I mike what I like and We Remember Differently, an experimental narrative short that draws on 8mm archival footage to recontextualize memory and testimony.

SLLS2007: “African Literature and Human Rights”:

Dr. Kerry Bystrom: Kerry Bystrom is Assistant Professor of English and member of the Foundations of Humanitarianism Program at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She received her PhD (English Department, Princeton University) for a dissertation entitled”Orphans and Origins: Family, Memory and Nation in Argentinia and South Africa.” Her research focuses on questions of memory, identity, democracy and activism in contemporary African and Latin American Literature, film and theatre. Dr. Bystrom received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies to support field research in Buenos Aires and Cape Town. While completing her doctoral dissertation, she also worked in a high school literacy program in Trenton, NJ and interned with a human rights newspaper in Quetsaltenango, Guatemala.

Thabisani Ndlovu: Thabisani Ndlovu works at the University of Witswatersrand as a writing consultant in the Wits Writing Centre, a tutor for undergraduate students, and is reading for a PhD in African Literature in English.  Ndlovu was a part-time lecturer at the Zimbabwe Open University in African Literature and English Communication Skills.  Ndlovu has worked on a number of projects including Language Complaints on the Pan South African Language Board.  Ndlovu also edited The Prunitan, The Falcon and for “’amaBooks Publishers.”  Ndlovu has received a number of awards and honors including the University of Zimbabwe and Mary George Memoria Book Prizes for academic excellence, the Postgraduate Merit Award, and the Harold and Doris Tothill Scholarship. 

INTR2005: “State Sovereignty and Human Rights:”

Ms. Natalie Zahringer:  Natalie Zahringer pursued her undergraduate degree at Wits University with majors in Law. Economics and International Relations. She subsequently completed her MA with a thesis entitled Power-Politics in the European Monetary Union” Currently an academic at the Department of International Relations at Wits, she has over the past years extensively taught both undergraduate and postgraduate  courses on a variety of topics ranging from International  Political Economy, The European Union and Public International Law. Her present research interest includes the application and enforcement of International Law” EU institutionalization and European nationalism and identity” and she is in the process of working towards her PhD with proposed title: A Comparison of ethnic nationalism versus social nationalism in the European Union and their respective impact on the evolution of European integration”.

Dr. Timothy Longman:  Timothy Longman is associate professor of political science and African Studies at Vassar College, where he has taught since 1996. From 2001-2005, he also served as a research fellow for the Human Rights Center at the University California, Berkeley, directing research on social reconstruction and reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. He has served as a consultant in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo for USAID and the State Department. The International Centre for Transitional Justice, and Human Rights Watch, for whom he served as a director of the Rwanda field office 1995-1996. His current research looks at social reconstruction in the aftermath of violence, focusing on issues of justice, memory, identity in post-genocide Rwanda. He has also conducted research in Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa and is working on a major project looking comparatively at church-state relations throughout East and Central Africa. He has published numerous articles, book chapters and reports, and his book Commanded by the Devil: Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda is forthcoming form Cambridge University Press.

ECON2009: "Development, Welfare Economics and Human Rights

Dr. Michael Allen:   Michael H. Allen is Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Allen’s teaching interests at Bryn Mawr center upon International Studies, with specialization in International Political Economy and International Law. His research and publications have focused upon the international political economy of African and Caribbean regions, as well as the challenges of governance at both national and multilateral institutional levels. An ongoing question in his research is that of the implications of an expanding global mode of production in manufactures, services and knowledge, for democracy at different levels and dimensions of articulation, from sub-national institutions, to national governments to regional and global markets and cognitive domains. Besides teaching and research, Allen has been active in college governance, particularly in Bryn Mawr’s Study Abroad program, and was a founding participant in the establishment of the International Human Rights Exchange, involving colleges and universities in the United States and Southern Africa. Beyond Bryn Mawr, Michael Allen is active in civic and charitable organizations, serving on several boards, including that of Edu-Tourism, a non-governmental organization focusing on Caribbean development.

LAWS2011:”Islamic Law and Human Rights”

Ms. Wesahl Agherdien:  Wesahl Agherdien completed her masters degree at Columbia University in 1999-2000 in terms of the Columbia/Wits Academic Fellowship program. Her lecturing research interests include Persons and Family Law. Succession, International law, Constitutional law, Human Rights and Islamic Law. She is an editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights.

Alaa Kaoud: Alaa is a Doctoral of Juridical Science candidate at Emory Law School.  He received his law degree from Mansourah University, Egypt and his Masters of Laws from the University of Notre Dame. He has worked for the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Human Rights Watch’s East and North Africa division, the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School, the International Center for Transitional Justice and United Nation mission in Sudan. His publications include: Azhar Educational Precepts: Between Development and Rigidity; Human Rights under Totalitarian Regimes: The Case of Sudan, 1989-94, International Women's Rights Bill and Toward Working for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Fourth Block Electives

POLS2011: “Politics and Human Rights”:

Prof. Sheila Meintjies:  Sheila Meintjies has lectured in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa since 1989. She has a BA. Honours from Rhodes University, an MA in African Studies from the University of Sussex and a Ph.D. in African History form the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. She teaches African politics, political theory and feminist theory and politics. Her special interests are gender violence, post-conflict transformation and gender politics in South Africa. She was a full-time Commissioner in the Commission on Gender Equality between May 2001 and March 2004 where she led the Commission’s governance program and was responsible for the Commission in Gauteng Province. In addition, Prof Meintjies has been involved in feminist and Advocacy Centre against Violence against Women and of Women’s Net, both NGOs that foster gender equality in different ways. Prof Meintjies has published widely on the politics of gender, gender violence, including three co-edited books: The Aftermath: women in post-conflict transformation published by Zed Press (2002); One Woman, One Vote: the gender politics of Africa: The Southern Volume published by the Feminist Press and the University of the Witwatersrand Press (2003)

Dr. Michal Givoni completed her PhD studies at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Her work deals with  transnational humanitarianism, contemporary practices of witnessing and testimony and governmentality in emergencies. She is a researcher at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute where she is currently involved in launching an international, comparative research project on "zones of emergenecy". Previously, Givoni was a co-director of a research project on the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories, and one of the editors of a volume on the subject entitled "The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Palestinian Territories" (Zone Books, forthcoming). Her own contribution to the book consisted of a documentary project on the occupation's "paper trail". Givoni teaches political theory at Ben-Gurion University. In 2008-9 she will be post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology and Anthropolgy at Tel Aviv University.

ANTH2006: "Culture and Human Rights": 

Jed Tucker:  Jed Tucker was awarded a prestigious policy/research fellowship at Columbia University under the the Teacher's College.  In studying "International and Transcultural Studies," Jed researched the "Impact of Participation in a Prison College Program on Student-Inmates' Social Networks and Rates of Recidivism."  As a teacher in a maximum-security prison in Ulster, New York, Tucker observed positive transformations of prisoners who received college-level education. He studied precisely how continuing education impacts recidivism and creates stronger social capital for the prisoner, both in the institution and among family and friends.  His research includes interviews, personal written narratives and analysis of prison social context.

Eric Worby:  Eric Worby is the head of the School of Social Sciences at Witswatersrand.  His interests are extremely varied but include public culture; politics, sovereignty and the state; colonial and postcolonial development; agrarian transformation; race, ethnicity and nationalism; HIV/AIDS and sexuality; and art and material culture.  He enjoys soccer in his spare time, as well as researching south Asia.

PHIL2014: "Philosophy and Human Rights:"

Dr. Olivia Custer: Olivia Custer received her B.A. from Harvard College and her doctoral degree from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, where her thesis was supervised by Jacques Derrida. She has written and lectured extensively on Derrida, Immanuel Kant, and Michel Foucault. She has served as co-director of the International Symposium for Research in Phenomenology, Perugia, Italy, and Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard College.

Ms. Sandy Koll:  Sandy Koll currently runs tutorials, consults with students and marks papers at the University of Witswatersrand in the Philosophy Department.  Ms. Koll has had a number of jobs ranging from waitressing to working at Amazon.  Ms. Koll recently completed her Master of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Witswatersrand.  She has also received the Postgraduate Merit Award for MA and the Postgraduate Merit Award for Honors. 

SOCW2003:”Psychosocial Perspective on Human Rights:”

Linda Smith:  Linda Smith is a lecturer in Social Work at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. She holds a BA in Social Work (Stellenbosch University), a M.Soc.Sc in Social Work (Rhodes University) and a B.Soc.Sc (Honours) in Psychology (UNISA). She co-ordinates the fourth year social work programme and her teachings includes critical social work and anti-oppressive practice. She supervises fourth year and master’s level research. Her current PhD research is in the area of South African social work education and whether it meets critical imperatives for social change. She is a registered social worker with a background in child and family care and community development.

Dr. Kelly Gillespsie: Kelly Gillespie earned her B.A. from the University of Cape Town and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She has taught at Chicago and the University of Stellenbosch on subjects ranging from African civilization and Marxism to prisons and sport. In 2008, she joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, after a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pretoria.