Announcements

Monday, 22 April, 2024 - 16:00

Ruth Sacks

This paper embraces what reading for air can bring to a narrative of how a 16th century portrait of Queen Idia appears in Lagos. Likenesses of the legendary Edo queen have been fashioned in Benin tradition since her time (including in more

Monday, 22 April, 2024 - 16:00

Ruth Sacks

WiSER and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at the University of London UCL warmly invite you to the fifthseminar of our new online seminar series  Breathing In: Air and Atmospheres   Ruth Sacks more

Monday, 6 May, 2024 - 16:00

Euclides Goncalves


Monday, 13 May, 2024 - 16:00

Peter Geschiere


Monday, 20 May, 2024 - 16:00

Awadhendra Sharan

My presentation shall focus on practices and technologies through which air was sought to be rendered ‘pure’ in cities in colonial India. In particular, I shall draw attention to hygienic discourses that prioritized ‘ more

Monday, 20 May, 2024 - 17:00

Sarah Nuttall

Dear Breathing In participants  Thank you for your wide-ranging and engaged participation in our Series so far. Please find below the next four upcoming sessions with dates and title, for diarizing: April 8: Helene more

Monday, 3 June, 2024 - 16:00

Ruth Gilmore


Monday, 10 June, 2024 - 12:00

Achille Mbembe

The staff and students at WISER would like to congratulate our colleague, Achille Mbembe, on the award of the Holberg Prize, the most prestigious international prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We are thrilled that his more

Monday, 24 June, 2024 - 16:00

Gala Rexer

In this exploratory paper, I invite you to visit the Edmonton Waste Incinerator in North London. Since 2020, climate justice and Black Lives Matter activists have been campaigning against the expansion of this already polluting more

Monday, 1 July, 2024 - 16:00

Matthew Gandy


Friday, 12 July, 2024 - 17:00

Keith Breckenridge

Short programme | Full programme, with abstracts                        Thursday, Jul 11, 2024:  Day 1  9:00 to 9:30 : Introductions  9:30 - 11:30 : more

Thursday, 25 July, 2024 - 17:00

Yousseff Mnaili

24th & 25th July 2024 WiSER, Johannesburg Call for Papers Delegation – or indirect rule - is ubiquitous. Leaders at the state level rely on a network of actors, including local and national bureaucrats, judges, central bankers more

Thursday, 1 August, 2024 - 12:00

Sarah Nuttall

A new seminar series running from February to June 2024 Recent work on infrastructures, atmospheres and the biospheric shifts associated with conditions of the Anthropocene have relied on rendering newly vivid those aspects of the social more

Wednesday, 30 October, 2024 - 12:00

Achille Mbembe

Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and the Innovation Foundation for Democracy On October 30 and 31, 2024, WISER and the Foundation will be hosting a public forum in Johannesburg, South Africa to consider the problems more

Thursday, 1 October, 2026 - 00:00

Keith Breckenridge

Over the last twenty years WiSER has established itself as the leading interdisciplinary research institute in the Humanities and Social Sciences on the African continent. From 2023, with generous support from Standard Bank, the more