Book launch

Events

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

  • Book Launch: Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa

    Breezeblock Café, 29 Chiswick Street, Johannesburg

    The African Centre for Migration & Society and GALA are pleased to host the Book launch of Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies over Borders and Border over Bodies. This book by B Camminga tracks the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North—where it originated—along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. This study centres on the experiences and narratives of people that can be usefully termed 'gender refugees', gathered through a series of life story interviews. It is the argument of this book that the departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of South Africa for gender refugees have been both enabled and constrained by the contested meanings and politics of this emergence of transgender. This book explores, through these narratives, the radical constitutional-legal possibilities for 'transgender' in South Africa, the dissonances between the possibilities of constitutional law, and the pervasive politics/logic of binary ‘sex/gender’ within South African society. Date: Thursday 11 April 2019 Time: 18.30 for 19.00 Venue: Breezeblock Café, […]

  • BOOK LAUNCH: “The Blinded City: Ten Years in Inner-City Johannesburg” by Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon

    Wits Anthropology, the African Centre for Migration & Society, and the Humanities Graduate Centre cordially invite you to a launch of, and panel discussion on, Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon's book "The Blinded City: Ten Years in Inner-CityJohannesburg" (Pan Macmillan SA, 2022), Thursday 25 August 11:30 am -1 pm, at the Atrium, Wits Humanities Graduate Centre and online. DISCUSSANTS: Cikizwa Ggokoma (Inner City Federation) Dr Kudakwashe Vanyoro (African Centre for Migration & Society) Siyabonga Mahlangu (Inner City Federation) FACILITATED BY: Dr Kholeka Shange (Wits Anthropology) For in-person attendance RSVP is essential. Please write to wilhelmsolomon@gmail.com with the heading 'RSVP: Wits Blinded CityLaunch." SYNOPSIS: ‘One of the best works of narrative non-fiction to emerge from the country in years. Quite simply brilliant.’ – NIREN TOLSI Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by the city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence. The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces […]

  • Book Launch: African Queer and Trans Displacements

    Please join us on the 30th of November 2022 for a book launch and discussion B Camminga (African Centre for Migration & Society), John Marnell (African Centre for Migration & Society), Verena Hucke (University of Kassel) and Godfried Asante (San Diego State University) in conversation with Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane (Cheeky Natives) 30th of November 2022 Breezeblock, Brixton 17:30 Please register for launch.

  • BOOK LAUNCH: Cosmopolitan Refugees

    Join us for the launch of Cosmopolitan Refugees: Somali Migrant Women in Nairobi and Johannesburg, a book by ACMS's alumnus Nereida Ripero-Muñiz on 18 May 2023 (see details below). The publication is based on her doctoral thesis with the Centre titled The Port and the Island: Identity, Cosmopolitanism and Islam among Somali Women in Nairobi and Johannesburg. Dr Ripero-Muñiz is currently working as a lecturer in the School of Literature, Language and Media, at the University of the Witwatersrand. Abstract: Exploring the dynamics of identity formation processes in diasporic spaces, this book analyses how gender, cultural and religious practices are renegotiated in a situation of displacement. The author presents the comparative case study of Somali migrant women in Nairobi and Johannesburg: two cosmopolitan urban hubs in the global South. The book is based on and includes ethnographic observations in Nairobi and Johannesburg, first-person accounts of migration journeys across the African continent and women’s reflections on what it means to be a Somali woman today. Citation: Ripero-Muñiz, Nereida. (2023). COSMOPOLITAN REFUGEES: Somali Migrant Women in Nairobi and Johannesburg (1st ed.). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738188

  • BOOK LAUNCH: East African Queer and Trans Displacements

    Over the past decade, East Africa has become synonymous with state-sponsored homo/ transphobia, marked by draconian legislation and recurring moral panics. These escalating dynamics have forced many LGBTQI East Africans to flee their homes. Yet it would be wrong to characterise East Africa solely as a producer or host of LGBTQI refugees. It is also a site of activism and community, of belonging and enterprise, where the limits of protection mechanisms are tested and redefined. Bringing together diverse case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection features original creative works by queer and trans diasporic writers and artists to explore the drivers, impacts and meanings of queer and trans displacement in and from the region. East African Queer and Trans Displacements is an open access collection that offers the first in-depth examination of queer and trans displacement in the region. The latest book launch was held on 13 April 2026 at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WiCDS). It brought together three of the editors—Dr. B. Camminga (University of Bristol), Dr Barbara Bompani (University of Parma) and Dr John Marnell (Wits University)—in conversation with Dr Kudzaiishe Vanyoro (Wits University) and Shinta Jennifer Ayebazibwe (University of Johannesburg).  Speaking about his book chapter, titled: […]