Research project that aims to investigate the viability of movement building for migrant rights in the South African context, characterised by growing xenophobic populism and discrimination, as well as push-back by an active, albeit fragmented civil society ecosystem.

The project seeks to define strategic and proactive advocacy for migrant rights, identify engagement strategies with various partners, and support the migrant sector in crafting new narratives and long-term strategies to shift policy perspectives, for a more effective protection of migrants rights in the country

The Mobility Governance Lab (MGL) explores the governance of mobility at multiple scales across the global south. It is an autonomous, critical space working to realise principles of innovation, independence, and equitable partnership. Through collaborative research, it offers original insight and perspectives to scholars, civil society, and practitioners while fostering the next generation of engaged researchers from Africa and beyond.

Initially concentrating on multiple mobilities within and from Africa, the MGL works through a series of inter-connected research and pedagogical themes relevant to the movements across ‘the global south’. It positions human mobility as a heuristic providing insights into practical workings and transformations of regulatory and governance systems. Speaking to contemporary policy, advocacy, and academic concerns, it supports the next generation of scholars and scholarship considering the socio-politics of human mobility. By attracting research support, through creative engagements at multiple locations and scales, and by facilitating dialogue across global and professional hierarchies, it amplifies these findings and insights in the support of civil society, scholarly, and public policy formation.

The Atlas of Uncertainty is a publication, an exhibit, and a digital platform. It integrates written essays, visual art, statistics, sound, and critical cartography. Created dialogically, it offers layered and nuanced understandings of transforming urban spaces and the moral and material economies that bind them. It is at once a tool of knowledge communication and a reflection on what we believe and how we know it.

The Atlas aims to move from the ‘census’ to the ‘senses’ evoking sensorial and embodied experiences of the material, in ways that challenge traditional ways of representing African cities.

The initiatives conducted by Chair affiliates and students are radically interdisciplinary and destabilising, in ways that provide insights into underexplored processes with acute theoretical and practical significance. These inquiries work across sub-Saharan Africa and in partnership with scholars on four continents in ways that insert creatively curated empirical insights into ongoing theoretical and policy debates around the foundations of political authority, the role of law in regulating differences, and the meaning of violence in shaping tomorrow’s communities.

The CoRE in Migration & Health is co-led by Jo Vearey (African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) & the ARUA Centre of Excellence in Migration & Mobility, WITS University) and Soorej Jose Puthoopparambil (Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, International Child Health and Nutrition and the WHO Collaborating Centre on Migration and Health Data and Evidence, Uppsala University). The CoRE initiative involves multiple partners and is supported by the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and The Guild of Research-Intensive European Universities.

The African LGBTQI Migration Research Network (ALMN) aims to advance scholarship on LGBTQI+ migration on, from and to the African continent. bring together scholars, researchers, practitioners, activists and service providers to spark critical conversations, promote knowledge exchange, support evidence-based policy responses, and initiate effective and ethical collaborations. ALMN recognises that LGBTQI+ migration does not simply happen from the African continent, but also within and across (imposed) national borders. We are committed to both reorienting LGBTQI+ migration scholarship towards the Global South, and promoting knowledge produced within the Global South in order to challenge systemic inequality within the global academy.

The GEMMS research group brings together academics with a range of relevant GV and MH expertise and practitioners who provide on-going support to migrants to establish a programme of work that generates new knowledge and improved understandings, and co-design evidence informed training intervention and public health solutions. We build on long-standing connections amongst the research group members who have a demonstrated interest in and commitment to community involvement in research. Building on research and interventions in South Africa and India, we apply theoretical and empirical insights to support efforts to improve the lived realities of migrants in precarious situations within the Global South through participation of affected populations in research.

Nurturing the resilience of mobile youth to navigate health and wellbeing crises in southern Africa (Nurture4Youth) is an NIHR-funded Global Health Research Group involving collaboration between ACMS, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the Africa Health Research Initiative (AHRI) and Zambart. Our goal is to build and strengthen a dynamic research partnership focused on producing policy-relevant insights that support mobile adolescents and young people.

We also aim to strengthen capacities in the applicant South African, Zambian and UK institutions and the young people we work with, to co-develop and lead an ambitious programme of youth-led work which builds resilient mAYP social networks that enhance visibility and solidarity, as well as informs policy and practice on building responsive SRHR services for mAYP. Through this work, we aim to enhance their resilience and improve their access to sexual and reproductive health services, ultimately contributing to better health and wellbeing.