Prof Thembisa Waetjen

Overview

Research Interests Politics and ontologies of ‘drug’ substances in 20th century South Africa; medical histories and health humanities in colonial/post-colonial Africa; and urban politics shaping Indian Ocean migrant lives. NRF Rated Researcher B2. Recent Awards 2024: National University Teaching Award (NUTA) 2023: Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Award for Teaching Excellence. 2021: Faculty of Humanities’ Teaching Innovation Prize. 2021: NRF Further Funding for Rated Researchers Award, ‘Cannabis Histories and Apartheid’s War on Drugs’. 2021: Wellcome Trust, Collaboration Grant for ‘SA-UK/MH: Medical Humanities co-working between South Africa and the United Kingdom’ 2020: Visiting Researcher, Stellenbosch Instituted for Advanced Study (STIAS) 2020: Teaching Innovation Grant, ‘Building an Archive with First Year History Students using Omeka’ 2018: University Research Grant, ‘Muslim Lives across the Indian Ocean between Durban and Porbandar, 1860-1928’ 2017: Wellcome Trust Small Grant, ‘Drug Regimes in Southern Africa: Regulation and Consumption in Twentieth Century Contexts’ 2017: NRF – Knowledge Interchange and Collaboration Grant, Opioids and Harm Reduction in South Africa: Growing a Multidisciplinary Conversation. Current Teaching ‘Global History to 1500’ (first-year level); ‘Epidemics in History’ (third year); and Research Methods (post graduate). I currently supervise post-graduate student research on topics in the medical and health humanities. Recent Peer-reviewed publications 2023 A Blue Coat: The Addict and the Unspeakable Girl in South Africa’s Colonial Archive . Thesis Eleven, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07255136231209522 Settling ‘dagga’? Shifting Frontiers of Cannabis Knowledge and Governance in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, forthcoming (with Perside Ndandu). Building an archive for “future pasts”: Undergraduates document their local Covid-19 ‘moment’ in World History Yesterday & Today, 29, December. Advocates of ‘an Unpopular Cause’: Frances Ames, Helen Suzman and Cannabis Decriminalisation in South Africa, Historia , 68.1: 144-176 (with Lebohang Seganoe). 2022 Apartheid’s 1971 Drug Law: Between Control and Cannabis in South Africa. Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 36.2: 164-200. Decolonizing Drug History? Notes on a Journey Southward (SI Introduction) Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 36.2: 119-128 (with Maziyar Ghiabi). South Africa’s Century of Cannabis Politics, 1922-2022 South African Historical Journal , 74.2: 359-363. 2021 Dagga: How South Africa made a Dangerous Drug, 1902-1928. Chapter 5 in Lucas Richert and James H Mills (eds), Cannabis: Global Histories , Cambridge: MIT Press. 2020 Cannabis Policing in Mid-20 th Century South Africa Historia 65: 1: 61-86 (with Phumla Innocent Nkosi and Richard Devey) 2019 The Politics of Narcotic Medicine in Early Twentieth Century South Africa Social History of Medicine , 32.3: 586-608. Global Opium Politics in Mozambique and South Africa, c 1880-1930 South African Historical Journal 71.4: 560-586. [Edited Book] Opioids in South Africa: Towards a Policy of Harm Reduction Cape Town: HSRC Press. 2018 Pharmaceuticals and Modern Statecraft in South Africa: The Cases of Opium, Thalidomide and Contraception Medical Humanities, 44.4: 253-262 (with Julie Parle and Rebecca Hodes) 2017 The Rise and Fall of the Opium Trade in the Transvaal, 1904-1910 Journal of Southern African Studies. 43.4: 733-751. 2016 Poppies and Gold: Opium and Law-Making on the Witwatersrand, 1904-1910 Journal of African History, 57.3: 391-403. Drug-Dealing Doctors and Unstable Subjects: Opium, Medicine and Authority in the Cape Colony, 1907-1910 South African Historical Journal . 68.3: 342-365. Sputnik from Below: Space Science and Public Culture in Cold War Southern Africa Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 18.5: 687-708. International and national collaborations Prof Jim Mills, Centre for the History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, UK: “SA-UK/MH: Wellcome Trust, 2021-2024. Dr Maziyar Giabi, Wellcome Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Director, Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies, University of Exeter, UK: “Drugs In and Beyond the Colony”. Prof Oluwafemi Adeagbo, Community and Behavioural Health, University of Iowa, USA: Global Health teaching collaborations, 2024. Prof Claire Clark, School of Behavioural Science, Dept of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexingon: “Points” Dist Prof Paul Gootenberg, History, Stoneybrook University of New York, USA: “Cities of Drugs” (with Andrew MacDonald, Wits University), 2023. Prof Goolam Vahed, History, University of KwaZulu-Natal: “Small Ocean” Project, at Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, October 2020. Prof Julie Parle (then History, University of KwaZulu-Natal) and Prof Rebecca Hodes, (then History, University of Cape Town), ‘Pharmaceutical Modernities’, 2018-2019.