Research
Biography
I am an urban and political anthropologist interested in city-making, precarity, residential politics, and urban materialities and infrastructures. My PhD was an ethnography of how the issue of ex-combatants and veterans in Namibia contributed to shaping the Namibian state and citizenship regime after the country’s independence. Since 2015, I have conducted research on the making of urban space and urban lives in precarious conditions, mainly in Namibia but also in Botswana.
Research
My current research focuses on how vital infrastructures stemming from the needs and aspirations of residents shape urban space and urban lives in the precarious conditions of the urban fringes of Windhoek, Namibia. What kinds of relations and exchanges do the everyday solutions of residents mobilize? What kind of urban politics and everyday governance emerges out of the push and pull of claims and responses between residents and authorities? How do various materials – water, energy, waste – either as tapped for human use or in more unruly forms participate in making the city and its lives?
