Academic Associates

Professor Mohamed Seedat 

Professor Mohamed Seedat is the former HOD of the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS). He is currently serving as Professor Extraordinarious at the ISHS. Professor Seedat holds a DPhil from the University of South Africa (Unisa) and is renowned for his extensive contributions to Critical African, Community, and Peace Psychologies. His academic interests span liberatory and decolonising philosophies and epistemologies, conflict, violence, and peace, as well as community psychology. Professor Seedat is particularly focused on health and peace promotion interventions within contexts of structural violence and is deeply engaged in the study of racism and psychohistory.

He has co-edited and authored several influential books that reflect his critical engagement with themes of gender, political violence, pursuits for peace and liberation, and community dynamics. Professor Seedat's career is distinguished by his dedication to advancing decolonial and liberatory perspectives within the field of community psychology. His work, both in literature and professional practice, is dedicated to addressing structural violence, promoting health and peace interventions, and fostering a deeper understanding of racism and psychohistory, thereby contributing significantly to the transformation and enrichment of the discipline.

Professor Rajen Govender

Professor Rajen Govender has been distinguished as a Professor Extraordinaire at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), University of South Africa (Unisa). With a PhD in social psychology from University of California, Los Angeles, he brings over three decades of experience as an independent researcher, academic, and consultant, contributing to the public, tertiary, civil society, and private sectors. His extensive research spans a wide range of critical areas, including violence and personal safety, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, child safety and injury risk, democracy and governance, political behaviour, transitional states, and social justice.

Professor Govender has an impressive publication record in peer-reviewed journals, has authored a book, and co-edited the influential volume "Rethinking Reconciliation: Evidence from South Africa" (HSRC Press, 2016). Currently, his research aims to map and understand the epidemiology and risk factors related to morbidity and mortality from violence and injury in South Africa, across the African continent, and throughout the Global South.

Professor Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is an esteemed associate professor and literary scholar whose research spans Maghrebi literature, Mediterranean Studies, and Critical Ocean Studies. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of California. Her first book, "The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean" (Fordham University Press, 2017), explores a body of texts from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Gibraltar in multiple languages, advocating for a transmaritime understanding of the Maghreb. Her work reflects on allegory and critical melancholia, showing how the Mediterranean challenges postcolonial nation-building and fosters a vision of a democratic Maghreb. Talbayev co-edited "Critically Mediterranean: Temporalities, Aesthetics, and Deployments of a Sea in Crisis" (Palgrave, 2018), examining the Mediterranean as a critical and performative space.

She is currently developing projects on the materiality of water and its epistemologies, including "The Residual Migrant: Water Necropolitics in the Anthropocene" and a co-edited volume "Water Logics." As the Editor of Expressions maghrébines, she contributes significantly to Maghrebi literary studies and holds numerous editorial and advisory positions, reflecting her influence in the field. Her academic journey includes positions at Yale University and visiting appointments at various international institutions, underscoring her global impact and dedication to advancing literary scholarship.

Dr Salvatory S. Nyanto

 Dr. Salvatory S. Nyanto serves as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), University of South Africa (Unisa). He is also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Dar es Salaam and serves as Director in the Office of the Vice Chancellor. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Iowa, focusing on slave emancipation, Christian communities, and dissent in western Tanzania. Dr. Nyanto specialises in religion and empire, slavery and missionaries, and Christian-Muslim relations.

As a postdoctoral research fellow at Ghent University, he investigates the aftermath of slavery in twentieth-century western Tanzania, with a monograph titled "Slave Emancipation and Christian Communities in Post-Abolition Tanzania 1878-1978" under contract with James Currey. He is also co-editing "A History of Postcolonial Tanzania: Essays in Honor of Prof. Isaria N. Kimambo." Dr. Nyanto is a member of the Editorial Board of African History Review and coordinates the African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa project, funded by the European Research Council. He has received numerous accolades, including the William O. Aydelotte Fellowship from the University of Iowa and a Visiting Scholar position at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Nelson Maldonado -Torres

Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres is a highly esteemed philosopher and scholar, currently serving as Professor Extraordinarious at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), University of South Africa (Unisa). He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Brown University and has significantly shaped the fields of Africana, Caribbean, and Latinx philosophy, with a focus on modernity/coloniality, decoloniality, and liberation ethics. Co-Chair of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and President Emeritus of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2008-2013), Professor Maldonado-Torres is known for his critical examination of Western liberalism and Eurocentrism, drawing inspiration from Frantz Fanon, Emmanuel Levinas, and Enrique Dussel.

His work, celebrated for its deep ethical commitment to decolonial love, includes the influential books “Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity” (Duke University Press, 2008) and “La descolonización y el giro des-colonial” (Tabula Rasa, 2008). His scholarship has earned him international recognition as a leading voice in the decolonial turn and in advocating for movement-generated theory and systemic change.

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kervokian

Professor Extraordinarious at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a distinguished Palestinian feminist scholar whose work has significantly impacted the fields of law, criminology, and gender studies. She also serves as the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and previously held the esteemed Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Holding a PhD from the Hebrew University, Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s research delves into the complex intersections of accumulative trauma, state criminality, surveillance, gender violence, and law and society, particularly within conflict zones.

She is the author of several pivotal books, including “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” (Cambridge University Press, 2010), “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear” (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and “Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Her work has earned her numerous accolades, such as the 2020 Impact Award from the International Network of Genocide Scholars and the 2017 Radzinowicz Prize from the British Journal of Criminology. At the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), Shalhoub-Kevorkian continues to advance critical scholarship on the intersections of law, violence, and resistance, contributing to a deeper understanding of the socio-political dynamics in militarised societies.

Professor Lara Sheehi

Prof Lara Sheehi, joining the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS) as a Research Fellow, is the founding faculty director of the Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab. She holds a Doctorate of Psychology from George Washington University, where she has also taught doctoral students.

Dr. Sheehi’s research focuses on decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, particularly within liberation struggles in the Global South. She is co-author of “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine” (Routledge, 2022), which won the Middle East Monitor’s 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book.

Dr. Sheehi is the President of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA, Division 39), and holds editorial and advisory roles for several journals and organisations, including Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Parapraxis Magazine, and the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network. Her work engages deeply with issues of race, white supremacy, and power dynamics in psychoanalysis through a trans-inclusive feminist and liberation theory model.

Professor Devin Atallah

Professor Devin G. Atallah, joining the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS) as a Research Fellow, is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He leads the Decolonial Antiracism Research & Action (DARA) Collective for Healing & Liberación, focusing on decolonial clinical community psychology praxis, trauma, resilience, and resistance to settler colonialism.

Atallah’s research includes qualitative methods and action-oriented approaches that inform intergenerational resistance, healing justice and decolonization/decoloniality. His work, featured in journals like the Journal of Community Psychology and Qualitative Health Research, addresses racism, racialisation, and community-based participatory research. Atallah's commitment to integrating local and Indigenous knowledge with activism and scholarship underscores his engagement with communities in Palestine, Boston, and Chile, focusing on healing justice and decolonisation.

Professor Urmitapa Dutta

Professor Dutta has been distinguished as a Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her work is grounded in Global South feminist decolonial praxis, which seeks to disrupt the normalised everyday violence (direct, structural, symbolic) across spaces. Her expertise expands to youth participatory action research, and critical community psychology. Her decolonial praxis is shaped by her formative years in the Northeastern borderlands of India, transversing the complex and convoluted forms of belonging, marginality and exclusions.

A feminist scholar-activist,  Professor Dutta’s transnational work makes use of critical qualitative methodologies to interrogate linkages between epistemic violence and myriad forms of domination codified by (settler) colonial modes of knowledge production. Professor Dutta actively contends with the colonial hegemonic power structure. Her current work is rooted in interrogating contested ideas/lived experiences of citizenship and community resistance.

Professor Stephen Sheehi

Professor Stephen Sheehi has been appointed as a Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences. Professor Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Middle East Studies. He holds a joint appointment as Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Program of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), and is also a core member of the Asian and Pacific-Islander American Studies Program (APIA). He is the Faculty Director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project, as well as a board member of the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network.

He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and commentaries that locate the interplay between psychoanalysis, photography, coloniality and decoloniality within Arab modernity, racial capitalism, colonialism and settler-colonialism, Islamaphobia, histories and resistance in Palestine. He also specialises in the social history of the modern Arab world, starting with the late Ottoman Empire and the Arab Renaissance (al-nahdah al-‘arabiyah). He maintains a particular interest in Palestine and Lebanon as well as issues of race, gender/sexuality and class with the Arab and Muslim diasporas in the country now known as the United States. Most recently, he co-edited with Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian State Violence, Settler-Colonialism, and Abolition, a special edited issue of the Journal of State Crime (Vol. 12 (2), 2024. 

Professor Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo

Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo, born and raised in the Philippines, is an anthropologist and curator working on social justice issues through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and multi-media knowledge transfer and praxis. Straddling academic, artistic, and activist practices, her work spans critical areas of memory, imagination, media and politics, political emotions, solidarity, ethics, and decoloniality.

Through an interdisciplinary lens, she explores the intersections of these fields, seeking innovative approaches to investigate, theorize, and address pressing social issues, with a particular focus on processes and dynamics of dehumanization and rehumanization that underlie violence, inequalities, and resistance.

Rosa has given numerous international workshops and lectures as well as published extensively on these topics, among which is the book Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges (2023) and the double special issue Negotiating Research Ethics in Volatile Contexts in the International Quarterly of Asian Studies (2022 and 2023), both of which she co-edited. She has also led initiatives and projects on engaged scholarship, including founding the Philippine Studies Series Berlin platform, running the Philippine Studies Program at Humboldt University of Berlin, and co-leading the Affect and Colonialism Web Lab. 

Currently a Guest Professor of Gender and Diversity at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Free University Berlin, Rosa has held teaching positions at the University of Bremen Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research, Humboldt University of Berlin Institute of Asian and African Studies, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, and the University of the Philippines Department of Anthropology and Department of Behavioral Sciences. She was also a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and an indigenous rights advocate for the NGO Anthropology Watch, Inc.

Professor Anisur Rahman Khan 

Anisur Rahman Khan is currently serving as Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS). He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, East West University. Before joining East West University, he was a faculty member at the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC). 

His research interests are in rediscovering and decolonising Bangladesh-centred sociological knowledge and realities. His focus of late is on the development of a sociology-centric knowledge base in suicide studies. He is also involved in exploring and fixing the ambivalences and vulnerabilities associated with men and masculinities in Bangladesh. In particular, he examines asymmetries in gender-related research and policy advocacy. Much of his work is situated in a critical masculinities framework. He has obtained his higher academic degrees in Dhaka, York, Bangkok and Cape Town. He has attended several professional training, workshops and conferences at home and abroad. Anisur Rahman Khan has published widely in national and international journals and contributed to several book chapters. 

Dr. Paul Terhemba Iorember

Dr. Paul Terhemba Iorember serves as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), University of South Africa (Unisa). He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. He holds a PhD in Economics and specialises in social inequality, energy policy, finance and sustainable development. His research focuses on the intersection of energy access, human capital, financial stability, environmental sustainability and health outcomes in Africa, Asia and Europe applying advanced econometrics and machine learning techniques.

Previously, he held academic positions at Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Energy University), Malaysia; Epoka University, Albania; and Nile University of Nigeria. He currently serves as a Editor for several Scopus-indexed journals, including the Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics and Handling Editor for Frontiers in Environmental Science. Dr Iorember has published over 60 journal articles and book chapters.

He is a recipient of multiple awards, including the Elsevier Top Researcher Award (2023) for contributing four Open Science articles linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Wiley Top Cited Author Award (2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025), and the Top Researcher Award from the Chancellor of Nile University (2022 and 2023). He also provides trainings on research methodology and the application of data analysis tools and programmes such as Stata, RStudio EViews and others. He is a member of the Association for Energy Economics.

Professor Fikile Nxumalo

Prof. Fikile Nxumalo serves as a Professor Extraordinarious at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), University of South Africa (UNISA). Prof. Nxumalo is an Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, with an affiliation to the School of the Environment and the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.

Having grown up Eswatini, Prof. Nxumalo earned her PhD at the University of Victoria, Canada, and her research interests were informed by her origins on the continent and experience working in early childhood education. This work is situated in response to legacies of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness and is rooted in Indigenous knowledges, anticolonial thought, and Black feminist geographies. Her interests include climate change education, environmental education, and science education in early learning contexts.

Prof. Nxumalo is currently directing the Childhood Place Pedagogy Lab, where she focuses her scholarship on engaging anticolonial pedagogies to reconceptualize early childhood education through place-based and environmental education in current times of climate crisis. She has been involved with numerous networks, including the Afro-Diaspora Futures in Education Collective, Common Worlds Research Collective, Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory, and Planet Texas 2050. Prof. Nxumalo’s book, Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2019), explores the interplay of place, environmental education, anti-blackness, settler colonialism, and childhood.

Professor Lucie Laflamme

Joining the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS) as a Professor Extraordinarius, Prof Laflamme currently holds professorship at the Department of Global Public Health at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in the area of Injury Epidemiology and Prevention. While also heading her research group ISAC (Injuries, Social Aetiology and Consequences), Prof Laflamme is also the deputy chairperson of the recruitment committee at Karolinska Institutet. a regular advisor for the World Health Organisation where she has been a leading author on reports, report chapters and policy briefs.

Professor Laflamme has conducted several research projects in the South African contexts and supervised doctoral students from the UNISA. Her current national and transnational research spans across all injury types to include studies in Sweden (trend studies on injuries among older people and youth, in recent years with a focus on poisonings) and Mozambique (childhood injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic, violence against children and cellphone use by motor vehicle drivers and pedestrians). She has published a lot on topics like social inequalities in injuries, Health for diagnostic support, child and adolescent injuries, and injuries among older people. She has a volume of over 250 publications under her belt, cementing her position, expertise and influence in the public health arena. In Sweden and abroad, Prof Laflamme teaches generic topics at Master’s and Doctoral levels like research ethics, publishing ethics, and scientific writing, and she runs workshops on the write up of doctoral theses.