Zintombizethu Matebeni (known as zethu)

zethu Matebeni is an independent scholar, writer, and documentary filmmaker from South Africa. Their work centres African queer life, decolonial feminisms, and transnational Black feminist knowledge production, connecting Black worlds between South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and the Netherlands. zethu is the founder of MATI Archives, a transnational platform for research, culture, and community.

Their publications include 'Reclaiming Afrikan' (Modjaji, 2014), 'Queer in Africa' (Routledge, 2018), and 'Beyond the Mountain' (UNISA Press, 2020). zethu has held positions at the University of Pretoria, University of Cape Town, University of Fort Hare, Nelson Mandela University, and Yale University.

While at the UvA, zethu is conducting archival research and writing 'Courage to Liberate: Black Feminist Works Across the Diaspora', a book that traces the connections sustaining Black feminist and queer life across South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil.  zethu will lead a Masterclass on 'Encounter as Method' on 27 May and co-host a film screening for the film ‘The Woman Who Poked A Leopard’ by Patience Nitumwesiga  that is followed by a discussion with Ugandan medical anthropologist and queer rights activist Stella Nyanzi.

Julia Dehm

Julia Dehm is an Associate Professor and ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Law, La Trobe University Australia. Her research addresses urgent issues of international and domestic climate change and environmental law, natural resource governance and questions of human rights, economic inequality and social justice. Her books include Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (edited with Usha Natarajan), Power, Participation and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights under Supply Chain Capitalism (edited with Daniel Brinks, Karen Engle and Kate Taylor) and Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate Change and the Australian Legal System (edited with Nicole Graham and Zoe Nay). Julia will host a Masterclass on "Climate Reparations in and against International Law" , a lecture on "Climate Injustice, Racial Capitalism and the Contradictions of Property" as part of the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law (ACT) Interfacing Private Law Lecture Series, and will lead a  Amsterdam Center for International Law Early Career Researcher (ECR) Seminar.

Dia Barghouti 

Dia Barghouti is a Palestinian researcher and playwright. She holds a PhD in Drama and Theatre Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (2021) and is currently a visiting fellow at the European University Institute. Her research explores Sufi performance traditions in Palestine and Tunisia with a special focus on their connections to Islamic philosophy and intellectual history. Her writings have appeared in New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Theatre Research International, Jerusalem Quarterly, Arab Stages, The Markaz Review, among other academic and cultural journals. Her most recently completed play, Journey to the Third Dimension of a Clementine was published by Dar al-Kitab (2025).

Soraya El Kahlaoui

Soraya El Kahlaoui holds a PhD in sociology from EHESS. Her research analyzes mechanisms of dispossession and the development of property rights in the MENA region to look at the different dimensions of property from the perspective of the dispossessed. Her research centered the question of dispossession in the debates on the « Arab Spring », and explained the existing systemic connections between (1) processes linked to the monopolization of agricultural lands in rural areas and procedures of eviction and expropriation in urban areas, and (2) the continuing eruption of social contestations of marginalized communities.

She is also the author of the documentary Landless Moroccans and numerous articles such as “Claiming their right to possess”; The Guich Oudaya tribe’s resistance to land grabbing” published by JNAS.

While at the UvA, together with Dr. Nawal Mustafa, Dia and Soraya will lead one Masterclass and one ‘work-in-progress-session’ (with musician Maya al-Khaldi) focused on indigenous epistemologies, philosophies, and performance practices from Palestine and North Africa to demonstrate how these traditions can be transformed into alternative narrative forms.

Jenia Mukherjee

Jenia Mukherjee is a transdisciplinary water researcher and Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where she bridges political ecology and environmental humanities to study coastal and urban deltas. She combines archival methods, ethnography, participatory cartography, and arts-based approaches to elevate situated, community-held knowledge.

At the heart of her work is a commitment to decentring agency in socio-ecological research. She co-designs situated knowledge practices in which river islanders, wetland dwellers, school students, and grassroots organizations become co-researchers and storytellers. From training Sundarbans islanders as “inhabitant interviewers” who document their own risk and resilience dynamics, to co-curating wastewater stories with schoolchildren who reimagined themselves as crows, fish, and coliform bacteria, her research conviction is transformative transdisciplinarity. Her ongoing ENGAGE4Sundarbans project challenges technocratic “managed retreat” narratives with community-grounded, gender-sensitive frameworks for social resilience. Jenia was the lead organizer for Jowar Bhatar Majhe (Between the High and Ebb Tides) – a co-curated week-long exhibition in Kolkata on flood memories from the Sundarbans as part of the AQUAMUSE Project, bringing together art panels, documentaries, comic strips, and ethnographic artefacts to decolonise museum-making and reimagine conventional curatorial practices.

During her residence, Dr. Mukherjee will collaborate with UvA host Professor Barnita Bagchi (Chair and Professor in World Literatures) and work on the “epistempathic engagement” framework that weaves together ecocritical imagination and ethnographic practice in fostering decolonial epistemological transformation through empathy. Her programme at UvA includes a symposium on Decolonial Ecologies of Water (May 27) , a Masterclass on Decolonizing Water Research (June 3), open to Masters and PhD candidates and the broader Decolonial Futures community, and a public lecture on "Transform-agency: Epistempathic Engagement ‘in’ and ‘for’ the Indian Sundarbans Delta".