Prof Pumla Dineo Gqola is Full Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies. She has been Professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Classical Culture at the University of the Free State (UFS), and Chief Research Specialist in the Societies, Cultures and Identities Research Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). She has designed and taught courses on South African Literature, Postcolonial Humour, Slave Memory in South Africa and the Caribbean, Gender and Media, Writing slavery from the African World, and Writing Gender in African Literature.

Gqola holds two MA degrees in Literature from the Universities of Cape Town (UCT) and Warwick, UK and doctorate in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Munich (LMU) in Germany.

In addition to Editorial Boards of several leading African, Literary and Feminist studies journals, Gqola has also served on the Boards of the 1in9 Campaign (link to: https://www.saferspaces.org.za/organisation/entry/one-in-nine-campaign, the Centre for Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) (link to: https://www.csvr.org.za/, the African Feminist Strategic Litigation Firm, Women’s Legal Centre (link to: https://wlce.co.za/). In 2019, she was appointed to the Ministerial Task Team on Sexual Harassment and Gender Based Violence at South African Universities.

Wendy Adams Administrator at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies and the Chair in African Feminist Imagination

Tumi Mampane is an African feminist scholar, and a PHD candidate in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg. She is also affiliated to the NRF SARCHi Chair in African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University.

Tumi always aims to bring forward and document the narratives of women who have been pushed to the periphery or incorrectly labelled as “voiceless”. Her research interests include cultural and media studies, township femininities, popular culture, African Pentecostalism, discourse analysis, narrative analysis, ethnography, and feminist theory.

Aphiwe Ntlemeza is a Master’s graduate in Sociology (UFH), a published Feminist Writer & Researcher. She has participated in several stakeholder engagements across the Sub-Saharan region to shape policies on Gender-based Violence and Femicide (GBVF), and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

She has further led and organised numerous protests, and movements addressing GBVF in the Eastern Cape, SA.

Dr Vidhya Sana has a PhD in Media Studies from University of Witwatersrand. Her research interests are primarily situated in the field of cultural studies. She is specifically interested in the complexities of race and gender and how the two intersect in post-apartheid South Africa. The prevalence of popular culture as a means of negotiating and exploring identities in a post-apartheid milieu has been a focal point of her recent research.

She recognises the need to research minority communities and their use of popular culture, as well as the representations in said popular culture products. Through exploring performances of popular culture, complexities of identity and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa can be revealed. In her time at CWGS and AfemI, she intends to focus her research on gender and the decolonial role that storytelling embodies in popular culture performances.

Simamkele is an African Feminist scholar-activist who has lectured at several leading South African universities in the fields of Gender Studies and Political Science. She also has a decade of experience working in communications, advocacy, research, M&E, and sustainability. She has accumulated a wealth of knowledge in SA's development and human rights sector.

Simamkele holds a BA in International Relations and Political Studies, BA (Hons), MA from the University of the Witwatersrand (with distinction), and a PhD in Political Science at Stellenbosch University.  Simamkele has published extensively for a young scholar-activist – you can find her writing in Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity and in Imbiza: Journal for African Writing.  She has written two book chapters, one published in Rioting and Writing: Dairies of Wits Fallists (Society, Work, and Development Research Institute, 2017).

As well as the book Feminist Institutionalism in South Africa: Designing for Gender Equality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). She has also contributed a number of opinion articles in media platforms such as City Press. Simamkele routinely features on various prominent global, and local news platforms.