I am a socio-legal property scholar contributing to related but distinctive research areas:

1. Cultural property: This work has been mainly developed around legal anthropology and I have developed new understandings of legal pluralism and customary law of indigenous peoples in the area of cultural property. I have conducted for over 15 years multi-site ethnography in 4 Southern African countries across 6 different San language groups. My recent empirical work has been funded by several SFC GCRF grants and focuses on cultural heritage and legal pluralism in Zimbabwe. 
   
   
2. Property theory and ethics: I have developed a Levinasian based property theory which is conceptualised as property as generosity. In this work, I engage extensively with continental philosophy, besides Levinas, I also draw upon Jacques Derrida. Methodologically, I use phenomenology through literary studies with a strong focus on postcolonial literature which I apply to different concepts of property.
   
   
3. Property frontiers: I critique the extension of liberal property discourses into new and accelerated property regimes with a specific focus on outer space and the common heritage principle. This research is methodologically strongly embedded in literary studies with a very strong focus on AfricanFUTURISM, ecocriticism and science fiction. Increasingly this work also extends to visual and performative art, including curating, commissioning and developing site-specific arts. Some of this research has been funded through a Leverhulme research fellowship (2019-2021). Together with the expertise I have gained in the area of legal pluralism, my arts-based enquiries around resource frontiers, have also shaped the methodology and focus of the One Ocean Hub. 
   
   
4. Materialities of property: This body of work engages methodologically with feminist posthumanism, eco-philosophy and speculative philosophy and I apply this to new property regimes in the area of microbes, deep seabed and fugitive natural resources. This research is funded by an AHRC project on rights of rivers and I will soon be hosting a Marie Curie Fellow working on a common property regime for microbes.

My teaching in the areas of legal theory and environmental justice and ethics is inspired by border pedagogy and epistemologies from the South. 

I am also passionate about research supervision and I am currently the PGR co-director in the law school.