Dr Jason Hickel
Email: j.e.hickel@lse.ac.uk
Dr Jason Hickel received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia in 2011. He specializes in democracy, violence, globalization, and ritual, and has been engaged in ethnographic and archival research in Southern Africa since 2004. His work has been funded by Fulbright-Hays, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation. Jason’s core research looks at how the moral values that underpin western liberalism get contested and resisted in postcolonial contexts. He is engaged in new research that investigates the increasing incidence of vigilante violence against foreign immigrants in South Africa’s informal settlements, specifically around Durban. His work explores the connections between xenophobia and the popular notions about witchcraft that inform South Africans’ anxieties about employment, marriage, and other tenets of social reproduction that have been undermined by neoliberalism. This project contributes to contemporary discussions about globalization and the rise of right-wing social movements. Although much of Jason’s work is focused on South Africa, he also serves as a COI expert for Lesotho and Swaziland
Dr Treasa Galvin
Email: treasa.galvin@gmail.com
Treasa Galvin is now a Senior Lecturer and a co-ordinator of the Master’s Degree in Development Practice at the University of Botswana. Previously, she taught at Trinity College in Dublin and at the University of Zimbabwe. She is a social anthropologist and teaches now Anthropology and Sociology. Her research interests are in migration and refugee movements, ethnic relations, kinship and family structures and social changes and developments issues in Southern Africa. Dr Galvin has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Ireland, Botswana, Swaziland and South Africa and has successfully provided expert opinion reports for asylum-seekers.