Madalitso Zililo Phiri is a critical pan-African Sociologist who is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. He is currently working on a book manuscript building on his doctoral dissertation tentatively ‘The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: Making Sense of Social Policy as Reparations’ under contract with Brill. The manuscript centres the quotidian encounters of the historically oppressed “Black underclass” within these two countries’ social policy architectures, tracing how those contexts have been shaped both by racial capitalisms and historical constructions of hierarchical citizenships. The manuscript makes two interventions to scholarship, one “epistemic” and the other on “the social question,” by offering a critique of a racialised neoliberal global political economy that permeates the two countries’ social policies.
Phiri’s other publications include book chapters and refereed journal articles in outlets such as Critical Sociology, Monthly Review, Palgrave Handbook on African Political Economy, The Journal of Southern African Studies, Africa Insight, and The South African Journal of International Affairs. His ongoing research interests include, the political economy of racialized welfare in South Africa and Brazil, Sociology and History of Race, and Black Radical Thought. He has presented his scholarly work as an invited inaugural and keynote speaker as well as participant at global symposia, conferences, and workshops. He has taught undergraduate and graduate classes in Sociology, Politics and Research Methods at the University of Pretoria, Rhodes University, and the University of the Witwatersrand. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Sociology from the University of South Africa; a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Development Studies, a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) in International Relations and a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Politics and Sociology, all from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is also a three-time Fellow (2014-2017) through the Next Generation of Social Science in Africa, funded by the Social Science Research Council, New York, United States. He is proficient in English and fluent in his native Chichewa, and competent in Portuguese.