Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

A social justice thinker and scholar activist, Sindiso Mnisi Weeks works as Assistant Professor in Public Policy of Excluded Populations at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also an adjunct associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town.She previously served as a senior researcher in the Centre for Law and Society, University of Cape Town (UCT), where she worked on the Rural Women's Action-Research programme combining research, advocacy, and policy work on women, property, and governance/authority under customary law and the Constitution. She also taught African Customary Law as a senior lecturer in UCT's Department of Private Law. She obtained a doctorate in Law from the University of Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, based at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Her degree is in the interdisciplinary field of law and society, whereby she combined training as a human rights lawyer and legal, social and cultural anthropologist. Prior to Oxford, she was a Constitutional Court clerk to the Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke.

In 2013-2014, Dr. Mnisi Weeks held a fellowship at the University of New Hampshire School of Law and worked on a book manuscript on the pursuit of justice and human security in traditional courts in rural KwaZulu-Natal. She has published research on women's inheritance, land rights, traditional governance, traditional courts and conflict between indigenous and state laws in South Africa. She has received several awards and fellowships for this work, including a high (peer review-based) rating from the National Research Foundation in South Africa; has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, including contributing several chapters to a textbook published by Oxford University Press Southern Africa on "African Customary Law in South Africa"; and has regularly contributes to popular media.