I am an anthropologist with a profound passion for science and arts-based creative inquiry, and I am a theorist of performance and healing. For over two decades, my work has been dedicated to making sense of the intersections of mental health, memory of violence, creative practice and embodied healing. I enact this work in sites as diverse as academic classrooms, museum and heritage spaces, healthcare sites, and environmental settings. The thread binding my research interventions together was birthed by my Master’s research, which explored the complex interplay between body, space, place, and memory, leading to the development of a critical idea of “reembodiment”.

My PhD research expanded on this foundation, engaging the past through body and performance within the public space of an art museum-gallery. This approach sought to challenge static framings of art, vision-focused displays, place, and knowledge, and to reframe museums as dynamic sites of life and potential. The PhD, completed in 2023 and titled 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, envisaged the art museum-gallery space as holding the potential to generate difficult conversations and open possibilities. These possibilities might facilitate a sense of movement from a place respondents described as “stuckness” – a key aspect of what I term "Exit-Opening" (ExO). This concept describes that which, in the context of historical and enduring violence, provides an opportunity to sense what else that context could become, helping to think beyond the feeling of being “trapped” or haunted by ongoing violence and related trauma. Drawing from my knowledge and experience of the effects of violence and trauma on subjectivity and sociality, I designed careful interventions that I then tracked, using participant responses as one measure of efficacy. From these, I reflected deeply on how people talk about the multiple layers of violence that still shape life in South Africa. This enabled me to develop concepts that are experientially close yet possess explanatory power in a broader world.   

For instance, another concept I termed “biometaphorisation”, emerged from reflection on the language participants use to make sense of their difficult mental health experiences. These experiences are often not adequately grasped by the diagnostic categories or linguistic forms available in biomedical models, which can overlook everyday realities or even undermine locally valued coping strategies. I used these insights to enable members of local communities, arts centres, educational institutions, and government departments—such as the Department of Health in the Northern Cape province—to reflect critically on their conceptualizations of ill-health and healing. This process highlighted the powerful, readily available resources, including arts and local traditional knowledge, for reimagining mental and social care and wellbeing.

This knowledge and commitment to socially impactful inquiry have generated invitations across Africa and elsewhere. For instance, in 2018, I addressed the Scottish Parliament on culture, arts, healing, and wellbeing. Besides my talk, I facilitated a performance and workshops for international delegates, including ministers, academics, and artists from UK and around the world. In July 2022, I convened a conference in Kimberley, South Africa, bringing together practitioners, master artists, and academics in medicine, anthropology, art, heritage, education, governance, and policy from Africa, Europe, and Asia. This was the culmination of over a dozen critical seminars I had been facilitating since 2018. One such seminar saw over fifty medical doctors and mental health practitioners in attendance, leading to a key insight: an environment carefully facilitated through a creative approach and ethnographic sensitivity can help patients, communities, and doctors generate ways to improve care and attend to voice and reason beyond the dominant biomedical frame.

My current engaged research project, “|Euca tuwukara kyââte (running very deep)”: Ritual Performance, African Ontology and Mental Wellbeing, is a multisite ethnography which uses a more-than-human lens to examine the relationship between mental health and the performance of traditional healing rituals in select African contexts. This work is growing, expanding into a larger investigation involving environmental arts, digital health, and Artificial Intelligence.

With over two decades of experience, primarily in post-conflict settings from Southern Africa (South Africa), Eastern Africa (Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya), to West Africa (Ghana, Benin), my research and creative interventions have been recognized through prestigious fellowships and residencies. These include the Engaged Research Grant (2024-2025) and Wadsworth Africa Fellowship (2019-2022) from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship (2019) from the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC); residencies at McGregor Museum (2021-2022) and William Humphreys Art Gallery (2016-2021); a fellowship by William Kentridge’s Centre For The Less Good Idea (2019); and the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Merit Award (2018). Furthermore, I was nominated for the UCT’s Distinguished Social Responsiveness Award in 2022 and received the Best International Collaborator Award from the Mayibuye Dance Academy (Northern Cape Arts and Culture Council, South African Department of Sport, Arts and Culture) in 2023.

Moving forward, my research will continue to explore the dynamics of memory, representation, sociality, subjectivity, and embodied practice. I will continue to be committed to anthropological and scientific pursuits that prioritize ethics of care and humanity, fostering a world where co-belonging and co-creation enable life, healing, peace, and flourishing. 
My work will persist in bridging academia, artistic practice, and public engagement, consistently seeking innovative pathways to address the complex challenges of our contemporary world.