I am an anthropologist with a passion for science and arts-based creative inquiry. In 2023, I completed a multiyear performance ethnography entitled Museum, Memory, and Mental Health: Making sense of Contestation over the Interpretation of Violence in Contested Spaces at William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, South Africa. In this study, one of the key interests was the struggle over the meaning of violence, and how this meaning closes or opens up possibilities for an Exit-Opening. In the context of historical and enduring violence, what I call Exit-Opening is that which provides an opportunity to get a sense of what else that context could become. Exit-Opening is a notion that helps to think beyond the state of what research coparticipants described as feeling “trapped”, haunted by ongoing violence and related trauma. For over two decades I have studied and worked mainly in post-conflict contexts, from Southern Africa (South Africa), Eastern Africa (Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya), to West Africa (Ghana, Benin). I have shared my studies and experiences through lectures, workshops, exhibitions and performances in several countries here in Africa and elsewhere, including Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Czech Republic. In 2018, I was invited in Parliament in Scotland during the International Culture Summit to speak on Culture, Arts, Healing and Wellbeing. In addition to my talk, I facilitated a performance and workshops for delegates. In July 2022, I convened a conference bringing together academics, master artists and practitioners in the fields of medicine, anthropology, art, museums, heritage, education, governance and policy, from Africa, Asia and Europe. The conference was the culmination of over a dozen critical seminars including exhibitions and performances I had been facilitating since 2018 in local museums, community centres, and universities. 

My studies and creative interventions have been recognised and supported through residencies and prestigious fellowships such as Wadsworth Africa Fellowship  (2022-2019) by Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Next Generation African Scholars Fellowship (2019) by Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC), McGregor Museum (2022-2021), William Humphreys Art Gallery (2021-2016), William Kentridge’s Center For The Less Good Idea (2019), University of Cape Town (UCT) Merit Award (2018), and I was nominated for the UCT Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Social Responsiveness Award (2022). In 2023 in Kimberley, I was awarded Best International Collaborator by Mayibuye Dance Academy’s Dance Pages run under the Northern Cape Arts and Culture Council, South African Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.