A short summary of Azille's research: 

Thanks to the work of South African feminist scholars, dominant contemporary discourses around decolonisation in South Africa are informed with a clear understanding of how colonial racial identities are made through the gender disciplining and sexual oppression and exploitation of Black women, and therefore the crucial importance of the empowerment of Black women in the project of decolonisation. However, less often discussed and considered in these conversations about the entanglements between sexual oppression and enduring colonial systems of racial dehumanisation, is the positioning of the white woman. In my current project my aim is to contribute to bringing the issue of white women’s bodies and gender emancipation to the very urgent and ongoing conversation about what decolonisation requires of us today. At the heart of this work is the very basic question I am repeatedly confronted with as white Afrikaans person thirty years after the ending of apartheid: Why haven’t we changed more yet? Why are our lives still so white and so separate? Considering the entanglements between race and gender, I go searching for answers in what is perhaps the last place we want to look: the realm of the sexual, the intimate, the erotic and the familial.

Research for Impact is one of the core strategic themes in SU`s Vision 2040. Can you describe the (potential) impact of your research?

The question about how race and gender intersect in colonial logic is not simply abstract and theoretical, it raises questions about how we structure our lives and societies in the present. An important element of this work is denaturalising things like heterosexuality, the gender binary, the nuclear family, to show how these structures that are presented as prepolitical and necessary, are made in service of coloniality and how reliant they are on patriarchal understandings and configurations of gender. In my work I am in search of critical perspectives that allow an disinvestment in the status quo; provocations towards alternatives or the not-yet.

In the ever-changing environment of academia, what are some of the obstacles postdoctoral researchers are faced with?

Most funding programmes in South Africa only fund postdoc researchers up to five years after the completion of their PhD. As soon as you've crossed the five year mark it becomes very difficult to find funding.

What would you regard as the most important aspects to consider to effectively support postdoctoral researchers?

Sufficient available funding.

What excites you about your work? 

How important it is!

When you're not in the lab, library or in the field conducting research, what do you do to unwind?

I read a lot, spend time with my friends, and I've recently taken up painting.

How has the postdoctoral researcher programme of SU contributed to your research career? 

I've been lucky enough to have the most wonderful and generous mentors at SU who shaped my work and thinking.

What advice, if any, would you look to impart to future postdoctoral researchers?

Find a good mentor who is willing to invest time, energy and thought into your career, development and growth as researcher.

Connect with Azille and her work:

azillecoetzee@wordpress.com