College of Humanities
Research Office

Professor Ruth Teer-Tomaselli is a Full Professor and Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban South Africa. She holds a UNESCO Chair in Communications for Southern Africa, 2002- present. She is a past Vice-President of the International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR). Ruth has also served as the President of the South African Communications Association (SACOMM) and is a Fellow of that organisation. She has served as a Board member on the South African Broadcasting Corporation as well as the commercial station, East Coast Radio and the community radio station, Durban Youth Radio. Professor Teer-Tomaselli has supervised over 20 doctoral and 40 masters’ candidates to completion. She has published and written widely on the history, regulation and content of television in South Africa and across Africa. Her other research interests are visual communication, memory studies and heritage sites. In her spare time, she gardens and trains bonsai trees. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0275-1006

Professor Chatradari ‘Chats’ Devroop is the Academic Leader for Research in the School of Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The challenge of the artist-academic hallmarks his profession in that his career underwent several mutations over the past twenty-five years. Such mutations encompass challenges of balancing an academic and performance (professional) lifestyle, whilst at the same time negotiating the dynamics of his field – shifts from art music to commercial music and the migration of his discipline, music, between different media systems (book to analogue and finally, digital medium). Toggling between the career dimensions of performing artist and academic has equipped him to better understand the role of artists or ‘creatives’ within the academy and the sector, as well as the challenges of the academy in embracing the changes that manifest within the sector. Professor Devroop is one of the few practitioners cum scholars in the field of Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Professor Oliver Mtapuri is a Professor in Development Studies in the School of Built Environment and Development. He has a PhD in Development Studies (UKZN) and an MBA degree from the University of Zimbabwe. He is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Zimbabwe. Oliver’s areas of research interest include poverty, redistribution and inequality, community-based tourism, public employment programmes, research methodologies, financial management, climate change and project management.

Dr Ansurie Pillay served as a teacher and film producer prior to joining the university. In the School of Education, she has served as a Discipline Head, Cluster Leader, representative on the School Research and Higher Degrees committee, and School Representative on the College of Humanities Academic Affairs Board (CAAB). Dr Pillay was awarded the prestigious 2017 Distinguished Teachers’ Award, testimony to her precious pedagogical talents. Beyond the University, she has served as peer reviewer of conference abstracts, journal articles, book chapters, and for the NRF. She has been the Convenor of Panel of the 2017 Thomas Pringle Award for Best Article in Education, has served as an Independent Peer Reviewer of journals for ASSAf and DHET, and as a Programme Evaluator at the CHE. She has examined theses and dissertations at UKZN and beyond. She currently serves on the Elsevier Advisory Panel.

Professor Maheshvari Naidu is a Full Professor in Anthropology and an NRF Rated Scientist who has received both institutional and national recognition for her research. In 2013 she won a National Award from the Department of Science and Technology for Womenin Science. She was the first person in the College of Humanities and the first woman at UKZN to obtain the PhD by Publication.

She is widely published with work that cuts across multiples disciplines and is on the editorial Boards of the prestigious journal, Anthropology Southern Africa (Taylor and Francis) and Oriental Anthropologist (Sage). As a feminist anthropologist she teaches from a critical feminist perspective and is supervising a large cohort of Post-Doctoral Fellows, Doctoral and Masters Students.

She has graduated 11 Masters and 14 Doctorates. She is a researcher on multiple interdisciplinary projects and is currently one of the Principle Investigators (PI) of a five year Andrew Mellon funded Project on Spatial

Humanities that will look at GIS and spatial mapping, as well as collaborating on an inter-institutional Gender Project funded by Ford Foundation with seven other SADC universities. She is also one of the PIs in the UKZN Flagship Project titled Big Data for Science and Society.

As Academic Leader Research in the Social Sciences she oversees the research and higher degrees processes of several hundred Masters and Doctoral students, as well as a large cohort of Post Doctoral Fellows and Honorary Researchers in the School. She is the school Internationalization Champion and overseas all the Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) initiated by the School as well as strategic initiatives among staff and students to increase and enhance research activities and outputs. She believes in leading by example.

On a personal level, she is committed to enhancing and nurturing strong academic scholarship among the pool of young Black African female scholars in the Social Sciences