About

is the author of The Blinded City: Ten Years Inner-City Johannesburg. (Picador Africa, 2023).

He is a writer, editor and educator who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), where he has worked since 2011. He holds a masters and doctorate in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, studied on a Rhodes Scholarship, along with an undergraduate degree from Rhodes University and an Honours degree from Wits University. He is a contributing co-editor of several collections including the Mail & Guardian e-book of long-form narrative Writing Invisibility: Conversations on the Hidden City (2013), the academic book Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and its accompanying visual supplement, and Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes (Duke University Press, 2020). He has published on his work on Johannesburg in leading international journals including Cultural Anthropology and Society and Space and has given talks on his work internationally including in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. He has published journalistic features and opinion pieces widely – including in Africa is a Country, ConMag, The Conversation, The Chimurenga Chronic, Daily Maverick, The Mail & Guardian, New Frame and the (South African) Sunday Times. He presently lives between Johannesburg and Florianópolis, Brazil.