Dr Theresa Auma holds a PhD in Social Studies from Makerere University in Kampala. Her PhD study focused on social responses to the expansion of (neoliberal) land markets in Northern Uganda. Her research interests are around Political Economy questions around market transitions, the land question and the role of ethnicity in shaping how these questions manifest in different contexts.

Theresa also has activist experience working in the land sector in Uganda. She is the current Executive Director of Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU), one of the leading NGOs on the question of Customary Land Tenure in Uganda. Besides her employment at LEMU and academic contributions, Theresa has also offered expert services as a consultant to international organizations such as FAO- Uganda Office, GIZ Uganda, Uganda Agribusiness Alliance and Namati Inc, focusing on diverse topics such as promoting responsible investments in land, protection of community lands and resources and promoting good land governance.

Andries du Toit has a PhD in Comparative Studies from the University of Essex. His training is in political theory and discourse analysis. He has done extensive research on the political economy of structural poverty and racialised inequality in a range of contexts in South Africa. His publications include work on the social relations of labour on commercial fruit and wine farms in the Western Cape, on chronic and structural poverty in the rural and urban Western Cape and in the Eastern Cape, and on the dynamics of marginalised livelihoods and informal social protection in the migrant networks of the Eastern and Western Cape.

At present, his work focuses on developing a critical understanding of post-Apartheid biopolitics in the context of de-agrarianisation and large scale economic marginalisation.  His key interest lies in the implications of entrenched poverty and structural inequality for the forms of governmental deliberation, policy knowledge and political community that are possible in the South African political context.  In general, his concern is to understand the implications of the challenges that are posed for policy discourse and governmental reason by the rising tide of ‘populist’ and anti-liberal discourses that have dominated contentious politics internationally since the global financial crisis.  In the South African context, he is interested in understanding how these dynamics play out in the context of popular mobilisation, political theatrics, and technocratic policy discourse around questions of land and political belonging.