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ISEK - Institut für Sozialanthropologie und Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Ethnologie

Emma Mavodza

Emma Mavodza, Dr.

  • Postdoctoral Researcher
Raumbezeichnung
AND 5.09

Research Interests

Digital financial inclusion and exclusion, Social norms and reproductive technologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, gender and reproductive health, Infertility

Research Area/Regional Focus

Southern Africa (Eswatini/Swaziland, South Africa, and Zimbabwe)

Short Bio

Dr. Emma Mavodza is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK) and an adjunct researcher at the URPP Human Reproduction Reloaded|H2R at the University of Zurich. Dr Mavodza attained her PhD in 2023 from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. In her doctoral thesis, she examined the social life of digital money in Eswatini and Zimbabwe. Based on her rich ethnographic findings, she rejects some framings of mobile money as financial inclusion and demonstrates how it is intertwined with the socio-economic reproduction of precarity as well as existing social relations, structures, practices, and social meanings of the adoptive communities. In her current project, “The socio-cultural life of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) at the margins in South Africa” , Dr Mavodza extends her thematic focus to investigate the role of socio- cultural norms and established practices on reproductive technology adoption and use among historically marginalised communities in South Africa. Specifically, Dr Mavodza explores the reproductive challenges and opportunities faced by black bodies, particularly how Black women navigate various ARTs not as mere medical procedures but as ongoing socio-political processes. In this ethnographic study, Dr Mavodza highlights the historical context within which Black people’s reproductive capacities have been pathologized, marginalised and systematically compromised. With regards to ARTs, she argues that there are distinct ways through which the historical treatment and marginalization of Black women in South Africa continue to affect their reproductive choices, decisions, and practices resulting in stratified, uneven reproductive experiences and outcomes. Before joining ISEK, as a postdoctoral researcher, Dr Mavodza was a junior fellow at Walter Benjamin Kolleg at the University of Bern, an early career research fellow (2023/24) at Collegium Helveticum, the Joint Institute for Advanced Studies of ETH, UZH and ZHdK and a Lecturer in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Luzern.