Dr Admire Thonje

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Name: Admire Thonje
Location: Room 610, A-Ring, Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
Faculty of Humanities, Religion Studies Staff  Staff Members

Contact Details:
Tel: +2767 750 3715 

Email: thanjea@uj.ac.za

About Dr Admire Thonje

Dr. Admire Thonje is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Johannesburg, with a Ph.D. in Development Studies (University of the Witwatersrand). He has a multidisciplinary academic background that includes a Master’s in Development Studies and an undergraduate degree in Business Management. His primary research engages the intersections of religion, migration, and urban life, with a particular focus on African Pentecostalism among migrant communities in Southern Africa.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in cities such as Johannesburg and Bulawayo—including urban informal settlements—Dr. Thonje explores how affective ties, faith practices, and spiritual economies shape experiences of belonging, precarity, and mobility across borders. His work makes use of affect theory and transnationalism to illuminate how Pentecostal networks both sustain and disrupt social cohesion in contested urban spaces.

In addition to his research on religion, Dr. Thonje has an interest in sport as a powerful social force, particularly its role in shaping identity, belonging, and collective memory among marginalised and mobile populations. His interdisciplinary approach bridges the sociology of religion and sport, highlighting how both arenas generate affective communities that offer meaning, solidarity, and aspirations of inclusion in uncertain urban environments.

Dr. Thonje’s publications and public engagement contribute to broader debates in the sociology of religion, migration studies, and African urbanism.

Qualifications:

• PhD, Development Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, 2023

Publications:

Thonje, A. (2021). No Ball! When transformation, indigenization and politicking overstepped into Zimbabwean Cricket. Sport in Society, 24(8), pp. 1416-1434. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2018.1561667

Conference papers presented:

“Economies of affect in a South Africa-based, Zimbabwean transnational Pentecostal church”. Paper presented at the 13 Conference Pentecostalism and Socio-Cultural Change of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent.net), University of Cambridge, 1–2 April 2022