VISION

Madalitso Zililo Phiri is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ), Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies (JIAS). He is currently working on a book manuscript that builds on his doctoral work comparing South Africa’s and Brazil’s political economy of social policy under contract with Brill Academic Press. His doctoral thesis compared South Africa’s and Brazil’s social policies through the lenses of political economy centering the interpellations of racial capitalism, poverty, inequality, gender and geographical stratification. His recent publication was a book chapter titled ‘History of Racial Capitalism in Africa: Violence, Ideology and Practice’, in the Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy (2020). He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in Sociology from the University of South Africa (UNISA); a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in Development Studies, a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) degree in International Relations and a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Politics and Sociology, all from the University of Cape Town (UCT), Cape Town, South Africa. He is also a Fellow (2014-2017) through the Next Generation of Social Science in Africa, funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York, United States. Phiri, a Malawian national and a South African permanent resident has had transnational exposures of growing up, working and conducting research in three Southern African countries Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa and Brazil on a short research stint, as well as visits to 36 countries globally, for leisure, presenting academic papers and civic engagements in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.