Kelly Gillespie
CURRICULUM
VITAE
CURRICULUM
VITAE
Date of Birth: 17/03/1976
9a 1st Ave
Melville, Johannesburg, 2092
South Africa
Tel + 2711 4829945 (home)
+ 27 (0)82 2943402 (cell)
Email: Kelly.Gillespie@wits.ac.za
Academic Positions
Senior Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand, Department of Anthropology
2011-present
Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand, Department of Anthropology
2008-2011
Co-founder and co-convener of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism
2008-present
www.jwtc.org.za
Education and Academic Awards
PhD
1999-2007
University of Chicago
Full scholarship in the Department of Anthropology
Criminal Abstractions and the Post-apartheid Prison
MA (Anthropology)
2002
University of Chicago
Honours
(Anthropology)
1998
University of Cape Town
With distinction (cum laude)
Top student in graduating class
Undergraduate
1997
University of Cape Town
With distinction in both majors and the degree with distinction
(cum laude)
• Faculty of Humanities Postgraduate Teaching Award, University of the Witwatersrand,
2014
• Mellon Mentorship Programme award, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011-2014
• Friedel Sellschop research award (university-wide) for top young researcher at the
University of the Witwatersrand, 2011-2014
• Awarded early confirmation (tenure) at the University of the Witwatersrand, 2010
• Co-authorship of a University of the Witwatersrand proposal awarded a Sawyer Seminar
Series by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2010-2011
• SPARC Young Researchers Grant, University of the Witwatersrand, December 2008
• Watkins writing fellowship (University of Chicago, Anthropology department), 2006
• Wenner-Gren Scholarship for dissertation research, September-December 2004
• Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) Fellow in the Project on Global Security and CoOperation, September 2002 – August 2004
• University of Chicago Lichstern Travel Grant, 2002
• CASPIC Summer Research Grant, University of Chicago 2000
• National Science Foundation Honourable Mention, 2000
• Max and Lillie Sonnenberg Scholarship for post-graduate study (merit-based; for South
African students to study overseas), 1999-2002
• DeVilliers-Smuts Scholarship for post-graduate study (merit-based; South African),
1999-2000
• University of Cape Town Council Scholarship (merit-based), 1998
• University of Cape Town:
Dean's Merit list 1995; 1996
Class Medals
1996: Drama; Media Studies
1997: Anthropology; Drama
Research Areas and Interests
Political and Legal Anthropology, crime and punishment, prisons, violence, urban political
formations, race, sexuality, South Africa, social and critical theory.
Publications
Gillespie, K. Idle Acts: Criminality and the Dialectics of Punishment in Post-Apartheid.
Manuscript in preparation.
Gillespie, K. forthcoming. ‘Toward a Queer Palestine’ in Jacobs, Sean and Soske, Jon (eds)
Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy. Africa Is A Country ebook.
Gillespie, K. forthcoming. ‘Anthropology Before the Commission: Ethnography as Public
Testimony’ in Fassin, Didier (ed) If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Gillespie, K. 2015. ‘The Bus as Method’ in The Johannesburg Salon, Volume 8,
Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism.
http://jwtc.org.za/volume_8/kelly_gillespie.htm
Gillespie, K. 2014. ‘Tausa: The making of a prison photograph and its public’ in Kurgan,
Terry and Murinik, Tracy (eds) Wide Angle: Photography as Participatory Practice.
Johannesburg: FourthWall Books.
Gillespie, K. 2014. ‘Murder and the Whole City’. Anthropology Southern Africa, Vol 37
(3/4), pp.203-212.
Gillespie, K. 2013. ‘Africa in the World: Riffing off Dakar’ in The Johannesburg Salon,
Volume 6, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism.
http://jwtc.org.za/volume_6/kelly_gillespie.htm
Gillespie, K. 2012. ‘Teaching Dissent: Reflections from a Johannesburg Classroom’ in
Critical Arts, Vol 26 (1).
Gillespie, K. 2011. ‘Containing the “wandering native”: Racial Jurisdiction and the Liberal
Politics of Prison Reform in 1940s South Africa’ in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol
37 (3).
Gillespie, K. 2010. ‘Reclaiming nonracialism: reading The Threat of Race from South Africa’
in Patterns of Prejudice, Vol 44 (1).
Gillespie, K. 2010. ‘The Social Life of Space: Post-Apartheid Prison Architecture and the
Problem with Architectural Reform’ in Prison Service Journal, Special Academic Issue on
Prison Space, No 187.
Gillespie, K. 2008. ‘Moralizing Security: “Corrections” and the Post-Apartheid Prison’ in
Race/Ethnicity, Vol 2 (1).
Gillespie, K. 2008. ‘Against Retribution’ in Crime and Punishment, The Wiser Review
(3), June. Mail and Guardian supplement.
Gillespie, K. (with Bernard Dubbeld). 2007. ‘The possibility of a critical anthropology after
apartheid: relevance, intervention, politics’. Anthropology Southern Africa. Vol 30(3&4).
Gillespie, K. 2007. ‘Between Union and State: The politics of allegiance in post-apartheid
prisons’. South African Labour Bulletin, Vol 31(1) March/April.
Presentations at Workshops/Conferences/Seminars
Committee on Globalization and Social Change Seminar, CUNY Graduate Centre, New York,
September 2015
‘Aftermaths of Apartheid: The story of the first post-Apartheid prison’
South African Homicide Research Colloquium, University of Cape Town, September 2015
‘Murder in the Wake of Street Committees’
‘Southern Observatory’, Goethe Institut São Paulo, May 2015
Panel discussion on Counter-Narrative as a strategy of Southern theory
Anthropology Seminar, University of Cape Town, May 2015
‘Criminal Courts and the Regime of Biography’
History seminar, University of the Western Cape, April 2015
‘Against Reconciliation: The Politics of Crime’
Anthropology Seminar, University of the Witwatersrand, March 2014
‘Myopic Justice: “Mob killings” and the surge in popular justice’
Archives of the Non-racial/Arquivos sobre o Não–Racialismo, hosted by JWTC, Goethe
Brasil and VideoBrasil, Sao Paolo, January 2014
Closed reading group and workshop, as well as a public presentation at VideoBrasil
festival
Research Across the Global South: Challenges and Promises of Collaboration, University of
California at Berkeley, October 2013
Panel discussion with Teresa Caldeira, AbduMaliq Simone and Gautam Bhan
Confinement viewed through the prism of the social sciences: Contrasting facilities,
confronting approaches, TerrFerme Research project, CNRS, University of Bordeaux,
October 2013
‘A Post-Apartheid Prison?’
Anthropology Seminar, University of the Witwatersrand, October 2013
‘Irresolutions: Judgement as a Figure of Time in Criminal Courtrooms’
Anthropology Southern Africa Conference, University of the Witwatersrand, September 2013
‘Death in the long shadow of the mountain: Popular Justice in Cape Town’
Occupations: a Workshop, Franklin Institute for the Humanities, Duke University, March
2013
‘Law and the problem of occupation’
The Social Life of Form, Workshop at City University of Hong Kong, March 2013
Participant and theme presenter
New Directions in Critical Race Theory, Workshop at Wiser, University of the Witwatersrand,
February 2013
Participant and panel discussant
Afrika N’ko: Debating the Colonial Library, CODESRIA symposium, Dakar, January 2013
‘Anthropology and the Problem of the Archive’
Queer Theory: Challenges and Possibilities for African Scholarship, University of the
Witwatersrand, October 2012
Discussant for the workshop
Anthropology Seminar and SWOP Seminar on Violence, University of the Witwatersrand,
October 2012
‘Claustrophobic Criminality: Intimate Violence and the Desire for the State’
The Politics of Precarious Society: A Comparative Perspective on the Global South, SWOP
Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, September 2012
‘Planning and Other Symptoms of ‘Surplus’: Atlantis and Malmesbury New Prison’
Spaces of Resistance, SECT, University of California workshop, Beirut, August 2012
‘Incarceration and/as Resistance’ panel, with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
‘Institutionalising government’: International, comparative perspectives on corruption,
Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), Johannesburg, August 2012
‘“Subterranean processes” and the “roiling mass” of the state’
Law and Society Conference, Honolulu, June 2012
‘Hate Crime in South Africa’
Crime and Its Fictions in Africa, Yale University, March 2012
‘Claustrophobic Criminality’
Apartheid Archives Conference, University of the Witwatersrand, July 2011
Panel presentation on Working with Archival Materials
Time, Place, and the Problem of Uncertainty in Africa, University of Chicago African Studies
Conference, May 2011
‘Hegel and postapartheid Time’
African Studies Association UK, Oxford University, September 2010
‘Visible Prisons’
Opposing Homophobia – a conversation with LGBTI activists from India and South Africa,
May 2010
Chair of a roundtable hosted by the Centre for Indian Studies at the University of the
Witwatersrand
‘Ordinary States’, Summer Conversations, hosted by the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory
and Criticism, February 2010
Participation in a small theoretical workshop held in the Magaliesburg between
South African scholars from a range of local universities and scholars from the
University of California system, co-organised with the University of California
Humanities Research Institute
Histories and Legacies of Punishment in Southern Africa, Oxford University, April 2010
‘The Space-time of Punishment: Reflections from South Africa’
States of Statelessness, University of South Africa, August 2009
‘The Ontology of the State: Notes from Anthropology’
‘Rethinking the Political Under Late Capitalism’, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and
Criticism, Annual Workshop 2009
Participant, and convener (with Julia Hornberger) of studio session ‘Critique of the
Law’
South African City Studies Conference, University of Witwatersrand, June 2009
‘Atlantis and the geography of punishment: a critique of modernism’
Anthropology Southern Africa, University of Pretoria, November 2008
‘Thoughts on an anthropological canon for an African South’
Future Tense international workshop, hosted by University of the Witwatersrand’s School of
Social Sciences and WISER, July 2008
Participant and contributor
Book launch, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, July 2008
Discussant at book launch of Steffen Jensen’s Gangs, Politics and Dignity
Seminar series, Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, April 2008
‘Claiming a State of Exception: Political Prisoners and the South African State of
Emergency’
Seminar series, University of Pretoria, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology,
February 2008
‘Claiming a State of Exception: Political Prisoners and the South African State of
Emergency’
Punishment and Incarceration workshop, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research,
Johannesburg, August 2007
‘Against Retribution’ and ‘The Social Life of Prisons’.
Power, Rule and Governmentality in Zones of Emergency: The Israeli occupation in a Global
Perspective, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, June 2007
‘Claiming a State of Exception: Political Prisoners and the South African State of
Emergency’.
Violence and the Body conference, Oxford University, May 2007
Keynote address: ‘Disaggregating Violence: Understanding the relationship between
crime and politics in post-apartheid South Africa’
Interdisciplinary Research Seminar, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research,
Johannesburg, March 2007
‘Moralizing Security: ‘Corrections’ and the post-apartheid prison’
American Anthropology Association's annual conference, San Jose, November 2006
‘Between State and Union: the politics of allegiance in post-apartheid prisons’, as part
of a panel titled ‘Orders of Transgression: Police and Prisons in Africa’.
History and African Studies seminar, University of Kwazulu-Natal, October 2006
‘The moral architecture of post-apartheid prisons’
African Studies Workshop, University of Chicago, November 2005
‘Deontic prisons and the politics of Optimism’. Dissertation chapter presented
African Studies Workshop, University of Chicago, May 2005
‘The Spectral Prison’. Dissertation chapter presented
‘Townships Now’ conference Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg,
July 2004
‘Street: the Nexus of Township, Prison and CBD’
Moscow, Russia, September 2002
SSRC Fellow’s Conference in the Global Security and Co-operation Project.
Dissertation research proposal presented.
Crime in East Africa: current and historical perspectives, Naivasha, Kenya, July 2002
‘Bloodied Inscriptions: the Productivity of South African Penal Institutions’.
'Challenging the State' conference, University of Chicago, April 2001
'Challenging the State: The South African Prison System and its Ulterior Authority'.
CASPIC (Centre for the Advanced Study of Peace and International Co-operation)
University of Chicago's Gender and Sexuality Workshop, 2001,
University of Chicago's African Studies Workshop, 1999, and
American Anthropology Association's annual conference, Chicago, 1999
'Thick Skins', a 26-minute video documentary based on research conducted on prison
gangs in Pollsmoor Prison, South Africa
Teaching
‘Decolonisation’
First year introductory course in Anthropology, in response to the new student
movement’s positioning of ‘decolonisation’ at the centre of demands for university
transformation
Half semester
2015
‘The Craft of Anthropology’
Postgraduate seminar in ethnographic method
Full semester
2012, 2013, 2014
‘The Development of Anthropological Thought’
Third year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand
A broad theoretical history of the discipline of Anthropology
Full semester
2008, 2009, 2010. 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015
‘Anthropology of the State’
Third year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand
A theoretical and ethnographic enquiry into the nature of ‘the state’
Half semester
2012
‘Cultural Citizenship’
Second year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand
A Frankfurt School-inspired critique of the relationship between culture and
capitalism
Full semester
2009, 2010
‘Introduction to Anthropology’
First year undergraduate course in Anthropology University of the Witwatersrand
Quarter semester
2009, 2011
‘Anthropology of Power’
First year undergraduate course in Anthropology University of the Witwatersrand
Quarter semester
2008
Field trips in Anthropology
3-4 day long educational field excursions for third year anthropology students,
University of the Witwatersrand
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
Maputo
Bushbuckridge/Limpopo
Swaziland
Swaziland
Musina
Rustenburg/Phokeng
Maputo
Barberton
‘On Neoliberalism’
Postgraduate seminar in Anthropology, University of Pretoria
An extended contention with the definition of ‘neoliberalism’ and contemporary
capitalism, and its ethnographic exposition
Full semester
2008
‘Race, Culture and Ethnicity’ September-October 2007
Third year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand
A theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into the nature and relation of three significant
social concepts
Half semester
2007
‘Psychosocial Dimensions of Human Rights: Radical Black Thought’
Third year international seminar with Wits and Bard students, International Human
Rights Exchange Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand
A critique of the concept of ‘human rights’ through a survey of the history of radical
black thought
Half semester
2007, 2008, 2009
‘History of Anthropology’
Postgraduate seminar in Humanities, University of Stellenbosch
A reading of the relationship between volkekunde, social anthropology and precedents
for a post-apartheid anthropology (co-taught with Bernard Dubbeld)
Half semester
2007
‘Ethnographic Methods’
Postgraduate seminar in Humanities, University of Stellenbosch
Half semester
2006
‘Systems: Introduction to Social and Cultural Theory’
PhD seminar in Anthropology, University of Chicago
Teaching Assistant and occasional lecturer for Prof Danilyn Rutherford
An establishing core course for entering PhD Anthropology students
Full quarter
2005
‘Power’
First year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of Cape Town
An introductory lecture series on the social nature of ‘power’
Quarter semester
2003
‘Marxist Anthropology’
Third year undergraduate course in Anthropology, University of Cape Town
A brief history of the concepts, interventions and ideas of Marxist Anthropology
Half semester
2002
‘The Politics of Transgression’
Undergraduate course, University of Chicago
Teaching Assistant and occasional lecturer for Prof Begoña Aretxaga
Full quarter
2001
‘African Civilization’
Undergraduate core course, University of Chicago
Teaching Assistant and occasional lecturer for Prof Ralph Austen
Full quarter
2000
Tutor for first and third year undergraduate students in the Department of Anthropology,
University of Cape Town
1998, 1999, 2001
Supervision of postgraduate students
Honours
Kabelo Maleke, Homophilia in Rustenburg (2009)
Melanie Machingawuta (joint with psychology), The Apartheid archive and effects of
systemic racism (2009)
Rebecca van Niekerk, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jewish-Muslim relations at a
South African University (2010)
Edmore Chitukutuku, Violence and the 2008 elections in Zimbabwe (2011)
Thuthu Zuma, Racism in a Cape Town high school (2011)
Mandla Tshabalala, Social Movements and the state in Soweto (2012)
Sophia Heliopolous, Gendered meanings of mastectomy (2012)
Alice Nevin, Maboneng precinct as an expression of gentrification (2012)
Raheemah Boomberg, Domestic violence policing in Johannesburg’s Western suburbs (2013)
Welcome Lishivha, Care and intimacy in a Johannesburg gay sex club (2013)
Masters
Kenneth Tafiri, Black Racism in Alexandra township (2010)
Nicholas Dieltiens (by dissertation), The Making of Criminal Subjects in Democratic
south Africa (2011)
Molemo Moiloa (by dissertation), Youth Politics in post-apartheid: an ethnography of
Khutsong (2011)
Edmore Chitukutuku, ZANU-PF techniques of power in rural Zimbabwe (2013)
Renee Van der Wiel, Treatment at a public breast cancer clinic in Johannesburg (2013)
Lauren Kent, Childhood in inner-city Johannesburg (2014)
Sinoxolo Khowane, Nursing and the state in a Johannesburg public hospital (2015)
Andrea Johnson, State practice in the border town of Musina (ongoing)
Teresa Dirsuweit, The pedagogy of bourgeois heteronormativity: studying mom-and-tot
groups (ongoing)
PhD
Edmore Chitukutuku, Militia bases as a political form in Zimbabwe (ongoing)
Natasha Vally, Social grants as state practice in South Africa (ongoing)
Other Academic Work Experience
Head of Department, Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, 2015-2017
Convener of Postgraduate Studies, Department of Anthropology, University of the
Witwatersrand, 2008-2014
Academic reviewer for the following journals, presses and organisations:
2015
Cultural Anthropology
2013-2015
2012
2012-2013
2012
2012
2011-2012
2011
2010, 2011
2009-2015
Anthropology Southern Africa
University of California Press
Social Dynamics
Journal for the Study of Religion
American Ethnologist
Critical Arts
National Research Foundation (South Africa)
Patterns of Prejudice
Wenner-Gren Foundation, an international funding organisation for
Anthropological research
Conferences organised
Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism
(10-day international workshops with 40+ full-time participants and many public
events, convened each year in Johannesburg)
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
Archives of the Non-racial
The Life of Forms
Futures of Nature
Ordinary States | States of Ordinariness
Techniques of Capital: Property, Self-Creation and Politics in Precarious
Times
Rethinking the Political Under Late Capitalism
Anthropology Southern Africa
Annual conference held in September 2013 at the University of the Witwatersrand
(co-organised with Hylton White)
‘Future Tense’, an international workshop hosted by WISER and the Wits School of Social
Science, University of the Witwatersrand. July 2007.
‘A New Map of the World’, an international conference held in Cape Town for the Training
for Transformation Project, an Africa-based project that develops critical consciousness in
grassroots development education, using the methods and theory of Paulo Freire. September
2007
Reading and Research Groups organised
Co-organiser of a Mellon-Funded Sawyer Seminar in the Comparative Study of Societies,
entitled ‘Race, Poverty and Property: Paradoxes of the Law and the Possibility of Justice in
Contemporary Africa, 2010-2011
Organiser of an academic study group entitled ‘Future Tense: Rethinking Radical Politics and
Time in a Neo-Liberal Age’ hosted by WISER and the Wits School of Social Sciences at the
University of the Witwatersrand. March-July 2007
Other Academic Service
Invited faculty member for the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation African
Scholars Programme
Johannesburg, January 2013
Accra, August 2012
External examiner of MA and PhD proposals and theses for the University of the
Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch, and the
University of Pretoria.
Other research
August 2007
Researcher for social impact assessment of a development project in Imizamo Yethu,
Hout Bay; for the City of Cape Town.
August-November 2006
Researcher and writer for the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park history project
January-December 2003
Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Prisons Transformation
Programme (Western Cape). Research and Evaluation for the retraining of prison
warders in conflict resolution and the practice of human rights.
February-August 1999
Researcher for a Cape Town City Council cornerstone project in respatialising
apartheid urban planning in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area
Activism/Community Service
Board member for ActionAid South Africa, 2015-2018
Submission of written report and oral testimony given as an expert for the Khayelitsha
Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Police Inefficiency, February 2014
Steering Committee member for AWETHU!, a broad civil society initiative for strengthening
South African participatory democracy, 2013-2014
Board member and Secretary for Philisa Abafazi Bethu, a grassroots feminist organisation in
Lavender Hill, Cape Town, 2012 to present
Volunteer teaching of Grade 12 scholars in rural schools in the Keiskammahoek region of the
Eastern Cape, a project of Democracy from Below and Ntinga Ntaba kaNdoda, July 2013
Facilitator and member of the oversight committee for the Safe Zones project at the
University of the Witwatersrand, a project creating ‘safe spaces’ for LGBTI students on
campus.
Volunteer facilitator of a 2-day women’s leadership programme for the black lesbian activist
organisation Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), Pretoria, August 2009
Judge for Mr and Miss Township Lesbian, Soweto, 2009
Assisted with fund-raising and logistics for the representation of The Chosen Few, an out
black lesbian soccer team from Soweto, at the Chicago Gay Games, June 2006.
Other projects and achievements
2014
Interviewed for Talking Heads, African Thought Leaders
http://talkingheads.org.za/podcasts/criminal-courtrooms-lecture-halls-kelly-gillespie/
Interviewed for Jacobin Magazine
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/jacobin-radio-south-africa-ep-4/
2012
Honoured as one of the Mail&Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans
http://ysa2012.mg.co.za/kelly-gillespie/
October 2009
Exhibited a image/text/grafitti installation titled ‘Give Us Or We Take’ for
Gazart: Masigazateni, a relational art exhibition curated by Molemo Moiloa and
Nare Mokgotho at 44 Stanley, Johannesburg.
2009
Organised and hosted the exhibition Act of State: A Photographed History of the
Occupation at Constitution Hill, the opening of which was hosted by the Faculty of
Humanities, and at which its Israeli curator, Ariella Azoullay, introduced the
exhibition.
2008
Launched the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (with Prof
Achille Mbembe and Dr Julia Hornberger)
2007 to 2010
Member of the Community Healing Network, a Cape-Town-based network of
practitioners and intellectuals concerned with the community-level repercussions of
apartheid violence. Led various community training projects in research methods.
2006
Founder member and facilitator of While You Were Sleeping, a Cape Town-based
activist film collective which organises ongoing screenings of progressive, nonmainstream documentaries, with facilitated public discussion.
2004-5
Written text for the photographic exhibition ‘Die Vier Hoeke’ with photographer
Michael Subotsky, exhibited in Michaelis Studio and Pollsmoor Prison, both Cape
Town
2004
Basic Mediation training, Centre for Conflict Resolution, South Africa
Membership of professional associations
Anthropology Southern Africa Association
American Anthropology Association