Staff Members
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Professor
Name: Thembisa Waetjen
Location: A RING 242 Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
Department of Historical Studies, Rated Researchers Staff Members
Contact Details:
Tel: 0115592001
Email: twaetjen@uj.ac.za
About Prof Thembisa Waetjen
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-20th 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.