Choose a Supervisor

Devon is a second-year PhD candidate at the UJ Department of Philosophy. She holds the NIHSS Doctoral Scholarship award and specialises in tutor mentorship and teaching philosophy to non-philosophy students.

As a dancer, Devon’s research is focused on aesthetics and the philosophy of dance. Her research interests include African philosophy, specifically aesthetics and personal identity, as well as feminist theory and neurophenomenology. She is particularly interested in identity and self knowledge in an African context and approaches her writings on aesthetics from a predominantly African perspective.
Supervision areas
Areas of specialization: Philosophy of dance; aesthetics (especially phenomenological approaches, e.g. Sheets-Johnstone, Fraleigh, Pakes)
Areas of competence: African philosophy, focused on issues of personal identity; neurophenomenology.
Contact: Ms Devon Bailey

Catherine’s research is focused mainly on aesthetics, most especially the philosophy of dance. Her interest lies also in the phenomenological tradition and its precursors in the continental tradition (most especially the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger), and this is often the lens through which she approaches her writing in aesthetics.

She is currently the co-secretary of the South African Centre for Phenomenology, and is also a registered ballet teacher of the Royal Academy of Dance. She offers free tuition in classical ballet to UJ students at the UJ Art Academy.

Supervision topics: Aesthetics; philosophy of art; nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy, esp, the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche; feminism; philosophy of mind; animal ethics; bioethics.
Contact: Prof Catherine Botha

Dr Chad Harris joined the department at the beginning of 2014 as the recipient of a Global Excellence Scholarship.

His PHD was on the philosophical dimension of the problem of external validity. He teaches a second year course on the History of Modern Philosophy, a course on business ethics for accountants and an Hons/MA course in Philosophy of Language.

Supervision areas: Philosophy of science (broadly), philosophy of economics, the problem of induction (and new riddle), forecasting and prediction, comparing African epistemology and scientific rationality alternatives (especially African) to mechanistic thinking.
Contact: Dr. Chad Harris

Prof Lötter’s research interests are in political philosophy and philosophy of science. He has just completed a long-term project on justice and poverty.

Supervision areas: Political philosophy [especially issues of justice], philosophy of science, theories of truth, and environmental ethics.
Contact: Prof. Hennie Lotter

Dimpho has recently been appointed as an assistant lecturer at UJ Philosophy. She has been tutoring philosophy for several years and was, for two years, appointed as a senior tutor. In 2017, she was a recipient of the Global Excellence Stature Scholarship. She was also awarded a Masters’ Fellowship in the 2017 Women in Science Award by the Department of Science and Technology.

Dimpho’s research interests are in African philosophy, feminism, philosophy of race and, very broadly, decolonisation. She has, in her postgraduate studies, been working on African conceptions of personhood, gender as well as an analysis of African feminism(s).

Supervision areas at Honours level: African Philosophy, Feminism, Decolonisation and Philosophy of race.
Contact: Ms Dimpho Takane

Veli is the Director of the Director of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS), and the South African team leader for the US-based Templeton-funded Geography of Philosophy Project. She obtained her PhD from Cambridge , and her other degrees from Rhodes. Before joining the UJ philosophy team in 2015, she lectured and researched at Vienna University, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Rhodes University.

Most of Veli’s work lies at the intersection of epistemology, normative epistemology, decolonising knowledge and epistemic injustice. In the last few years she was writing a book on the nature of evidence, which got published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She is now moving to the greener pastures of Epistemic Injustice under the auspices of a British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship.

Supervision areas
PhD, MA, and Honours levels: Epistemology, Normative Epistemology, Decolonising Knowledge and Epistemic Injustice

Contact: Prof. Veli Mitova

Zinhle’s research interests lie broadly ,in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of race. Her Honour’s research was on the biological basis of race and her Master’s dissertation is on heritability and genetic causation.

Zinhle lectures undergraduate courses in metaphysics and epistemology. She is also an Iris Marion Young Scholar and a Cornelius Golightly fellow. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Supervision areas (MA and Hons): Philosophy of biology and philosophy of race.
Contact: Ms. Zinhle Mncube

Dr Asheel Singh’s research areas include applied ethics, with a specific focus on bioethics. He has lectured at the University of Zululand, and tutored several philosophy modules at UJ. In 2014, he was the recipient of the UJ Graduate Student Essay Prize (now known as the Lembede Essay Prize) for excellence in philosophical writing.

His doctoral thesis awarded in 2019 brings together theories of meaning in life, dignity, anti-natalism, and transhumanism in an effort to better understand our ethical obligations to future generations.

Supervision areas (Hons and MA): Various issues in applied ethics, including bioethics (transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement), environmental ethics (animal rights, ethics of eating meat), and population ethics (anti-natalism); normative ethics, with a particular interest in deontology, virtue ethics, and various Eastern approaches (including Buddhist ethics); meaning in life.
Contact: Dr. Asheel Singh

Ben is an associate professor in philosophy. Prior to joining the University of Johannesburg in 2015 he lectured at The University of Birmingham (in the United Kingdom). He received his PhD from Nottingham University in 2012.

Ben’s research focuses on the metaphysics of laws and causation, and on the philosophy of medicine. He published a monograph entitled ‘Concepts and Causes in the Philosophy of Disease’ in 2016, and has numerous papers in highly ranked international philosophy journals. He has published articles on the metaphysics of least action principles, the problem of induction, the nature of fundamental properties, the philosophy of sport, and on the philosophy of health and disease. Ben believes that philosophical work in medicine can have a direct impact on society, and so also collaborates with academics in the medical sciences to address what some might call ‘real world problems’ in public health.

Supervision areas
At all levels: Metaphysics and concepts of Causation, Metaphysics and concepts of Laws, Philosophy of Health, Disease, and Medicine, Philosophy of Epidemiology.
At MA and Hons level: Philosophy of Sport, Mereology, Philosophy of Science broadly construed.
Contact: Prof Ben Smart

Rafael has published widely in the area of 19th and 20th century European philosophy. His research and teaching interests include phenomenology, German Idealism, epistemology and early modern philosophy. He is the author of Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019) and the editor of Identity and Difference: Contemporary Debates on the Self (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Identity and Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 2017) and Phenomenology and Naturalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2017).

He is the co-founder and co-chair of the Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa. He is currently completing his second book provisionally titled At the Limit of Phenomenology: The Stranger in Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida.

At all levels:19th and 20th century European philosophy, German idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, early modern philosophy, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, Aristotle, Bergson.
Contact: Prof. Rafael Winkler