Visiting Researchers
Dr Aalia Cassim
Aalia Cassim holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Witwatersrand and a Masters in Economic Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is a Director in the Economic Policy division at the National Treasury where she works on economic reforms in energy, transport and telecoms. She also focuses on making tax data available to researchers to undertake policy-relevant research.
Dr Adam Aboobaker
Adam Aboobaker is an economist currently based at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of London - SOAS. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has produced research on macroeconomic development for the International Labour Organization, and in peer-reviewed journals such as the Review of African Political Economy and the Cambridge Journal of Economics (forthcoming).
Associate Professor Sarah Cook
Sarah Cook is Honorary Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, where she was inaugural Director at the Institute for Global Development (2018- 2020). A social economist and China specialist, her research has focused primarily on China's social and economic transformations, including on issues of labour and migration, poverty and inequality, social policy and gender, as well as on social protection in Asia. She has held Director positions within the United Nations, at UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti in Florence (2015-2018), and at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) (2009-2015). Her work with the Ford Foundation’s Beijing Office included initiating research on the rise of informal employment and establishing a program to train gender economists. From 1996-2009, she was a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, where she directed both the MA in Gender and Development and the MPhil in Development Studies. Sarah received her PhD from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and her BA from Oxford University.
Dr Alex Mashilo
Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo started working in the automotive manufacturing industry in the late 1990s first as an apprentice at Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa. After qualifying as an electrician (engineering) under the Automobile Manufacturing Industry Education and Training Board, incorporated into the Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority, Mashilo worked as part of an engineering maintenance team at Ford. He obtained his National N. Diploma in the Field of Engineering while working in the globalised and technologically advancing automotive manufacturing industry. Mashilo studied labour law following his election as a full-time shop steward for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. Later, the union appointed him to various national responsibilities, including communications, automotive and new tyre manufacturing sectors co-ordinator, chief negotiator in the Automobile National Bargaining Forum and the New Tyre Manufacturing Industry Bargaining Council, and Head of Department for Organising, Collective Bargaining and Campaigns. Mashilo furthered his studies while working for the union and obtained an MA in Labour Policy and Globalisation (Wits). He later obtained his PhD (Wits), which he pursued while working for the South African Communist Party, where he started in October 2013 as head of department for communication. Integrating labour and development, Mashilo’s research interests are based on his MA and PhD studies: global institutions and economic restructuring, globalisation and economic policy, economic and social upgrading in global production networks and industrial development, including changes in technology, work methods, ways of organising and co-ordinating production, and their implications for work, workers, and their responses. In mid-December 2020, Dr Mashilo was appointed as a special advisor in the Office of the Premier, Limpopo Province, focusing on communications, economic development, and stakeholder relations.
Professor Emeritus Edward Webster
Edward Webster is is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Sciences, and a Research Associate at the Southern Centre of Inequality Studies at the University of Witwatersrand . He is a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Dr Melissa Tandiwe Myambo
Melissa Tandiwe Myambo edited Reversing Urban Inequality in Johannesburg. After earning her PhD from New York University, she held fellowships from University of California, Los Angeles; University of Cape Town; and the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. She is the recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award.
Rahma Leuner
Rahma is a consultant at Acacia Economics, which offers competition and regulation expertise across Africa. She previously worked as a competition (and regulation) economist at Genesis Analytics and later the Competition Commission of South Africa. She also worked as a health economist at HE2RO. She holds Economics Masters degrees from UCT and the Universiteit van Tilburg.
Rashaad Amra
Rashaad Amra is a Visiting Researcher at the SCIS’s Public Economy Project. He is an economist with over 10 years experience in applied public policy. He started his career at the National Treasury’s Economic Policy Division where he worked on several sectors of the real economy. He subsequently advised the legislature on fiscal policy, public finance, and economic policy at the Parliamentary Budget Office, where he was chiefly responsible for the Office’s macro-fiscal and revenue modelling. Rashaad holds a Masters in Economics from Stellenbosch University.
Dr Stuart Theobald
Stuart Theobald is chairman of Intellidex, a research and consulting house. Stuart advises investors, financial services businesses, senior policymakers and global development institutions on capital markets and financial systems. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he is also a visiting researcher.?
Sha'ista Goga
Sha'ista Goga is an economist with an interest in competition and the regulation of network industries and utilities in the Global South. She is a Part-time Member of the South African Competition Tribunal and a co-founder of Acacia Economics. Sha'ista is engaged in research and advisory work for multilateral institutions, regulators and governments in Southern and East Africa. Sha'ista has an M.Phil in economics from Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
Janine Rauch
Janine is an experienced researcher, strategy advisor and project manager. She has both implementation and evaluation experience in various aspects of development and governance, mainly in conflict-affected and fragile states in Africa. Her career began in civil society organisations in South Africa during the democratic transition, where she led The Policing Research Project at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, conducting research, developing and implementing policy advocacy campaigns and advising the transitional government structures on policy options for police reform. She held a senior civil service position working on police & criminal justice reforms and crime prevention in South Africa’s first democratic government and has since worked independently as a consultant or advisor on governance, crime prevention and anti-corruption projects with a variety of international development agencies, multilateral bodies and funders. In addition to a Masters degree in Criminology, she has a cum laude post-graduate qualification in Monitoring and Evaluation Methods and often conducts independent evaluations for programme funders. She has lived and worked in India, Ethiopia, DRC, Myanmar (Burma) and Uganda. Since returning to South Africa in 2018, she has specialised in evaluations and building results systems with research NGOs, and supporting independent civil society anti-corruption efforts. She has worked with SCIS on results-monitoring and documenting impact since 2021 and was appointed a Visiting Researcher in early 2023.