People

Dr Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

Lecturer
Department of Sociology and Criminology
Dr Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

Profile

Biography

Research Interests: Critical race, class, gender and sexuality; Decolonial thought and praxis; Creative activism; Arts-based practices and research; Sexual Reproductive Health; Sex work; Migration; Meaningful collaborations with NGOs and grassroot organisations.

Research and professional activities

Current research

Africa and African diaspora network on digital archive

This project stems from the construction of partnerships between the African Gender Institute (AGI) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and the Interdisciplinary Center for African Descendent Research and Heritage (NIREMA) at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, with the aim of promoting transcontinental dialogue in the field of Gender Studies focused on decolonization/decoloniality and freedom. The first part of the project (during 2021) is to make the scholarship of each continent accessible to the other through translation and online publishing. This entails the production of e-book series featuring a dialogue between two scholars, one from each continent, with a curated in-conversation introduction. The objective is to launch, through a live and recorded online platform, two volumes for 2021, the first focused on pioneering scholars and the second on contemporary work, with the aim to continue with the series in the following years. The second aspect of the project is to develop a digital archive of these and other textual and audio-visual resources that would allow scholars from each context to become more familiar with and engage scholarship, ideas, activism, art pedagogic tools and other outputs from the other context. The aim in doing this is to promote south-south collaboration, knowledge sharing and networking so to strengthen the connections amongst scholars, teachers, activists, artists and ideas in these two spaces.

Engaged Scholarship and Narratives of Change

The Engaged scholarship and narratives of change in comparative perspective project will investigate the co-operation between academy and society, labelled engaged scholarship, across three continents. Engaged scholarship refers to transformative and critical forms of academic work having the ambition and the capacity to stimulate reflection that enables more inclusive practices in society and academia. This project aims at a more comprehensive and transformative understanding of how engaged scholarship can contribute to the societal inclusion of refugees, arguably the most urgent challenge of this decade. Its underlying assumption is that the social sciences have an important role in enlarging societal and academic imaginations by connecting local, historical, and analytical knowledge to enable an actual inclusion of disadvantaged groups.
More information about this project

Teaching and supervision

Current teaching responsibilities

  • Human Rights: Theories and Applications (HU901)

  • Gender, Race, Identity and Human Rights (HU931)

  • The Sociological Imagination (SC111)

  • Race, Class and Gender (SC233)

  • Crime, Politics and the Sex Industry (SC560)

  • Mastering Occupation (HS895)

  • Career Development and Making a Difference (SC199)

Publications

Journal articles (5)

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2021). Review of Serena Owusua Dankwa, Knowing Women: Same-sex Intimacy, Gender and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (ISBN 978-1-108-49590-5). 2021, 318pp. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863575. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 91 (4), 687-689

Dias, SR. and Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2021). A Study of Hate Speech in the North and South: Politicians as Communicative Agents. Language, Discourse and Society. 9 (2), 31-47

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P. and Matchett, S., (2020). Aesthetic Grammars of Social Justice: Sex Work Reimagined. Studies on Home and Community Science. 14 (1-2), 7-18

Matchett, S. and Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2020). “Butoh gives back the feeling to the people”. Agenda. 34 (3), 74-86

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2020). Through The Lens of Modernity. GLQ: a journal of lesbian and gay studies. 26 (3), 455-475

Book chapters (9)

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2024). Complicating queer desires: Identity politics of the lesbian and bisexual communities in South Africa. In: Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity. Editors: Ryan-Flood, R. and Tooth Murphy, A., . Routledge. 9781032499048

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2023). Archives of neofascism Charting student historical debt in a neoliberal university in South Africa. In: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Global South. Editors: Pinheiro-Machado, R. and Vargas Maia, T., . Routledge. 9781032040332

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2023). Sexing in the Cities: Sex, Desire and Sexual Health of black township women who love women.. In: Difficult Conversations A Feminist Dialogue. Editors: Ryan-Flood, R., Crowhurst, I. and James-Hawkins, L., . Routledge. 133- 143. 9781003088417

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2023). Sex Work Feminicide and the Making of #SayHerName Campaign by SWEAT in South Africa. In: The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide. Editors: Dawson, M. and Mobayed Vega, S., . Routledge. 9781032064390

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2023). Building coalitions across structural borders as a form radical intimacy.. In: The SAGE Handbook of Global Social Theory. Sage.. Editors: Bhambra, G., Mayblin, L., Medien, K. and Viveros Vigoya, M., . Sage. 9781529772128

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2022). Through a decolonial lens: Homonationalism in South Africa and the Cape Town gay pride parade.. In: Homnationalism, Femonationalism and Ablenationalism. Editors: Sifaki, A., Quinan, CL. and Loncarevic, K., . Routledge. 9780367715656

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2022). Female masculinities in South Africa: Negotiating belonging. In: Investigating Cultures of Equality. Editors: Golanska, D., Rozalska, A. and Clisby, S., . Routledge. 9781032105161

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2022). An Archive of Disposability: (Trans)gender and Sexuality in South Africa. In: Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric. Editors: Rhodes, J. and Alexander, J., . Routledge. 9780367696580

Kisubi Mbasalaki, P., (2021). Foreword: The Mother-tongue project and its diverse language expressions/dialects.. In: Collaborative Conversations: Celebrating Twenty-One Years of the Mothertongue Project. Editors: Matchett, S. and Halligey, A., . Modjaji Books. 978-1928433163

Grants and funding

2024

Reparations: resisting historical and contemporary injustices through decolonial feminism

SOAS University of London

Contact

phoebe.kisubi-mbasalaki@essex.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1206 876375

Location:

6.324, Colchester Campus