Joel Malesela Modiri

Professor Joel Malesela Modiri is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria. He holds the degrees LLB cum laude and PhD from the University of Pretoria. His PhD thesis was entitled “The Jurisprudence of Steve Biko: A Study in Race, Law and Power in the ‘Afterlife’ of Colonial-apartheid”. Modiri mainly teaches in the field of Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy. He is published extensively in his main areas of research focus, namely Critical Race Theory, African Jurisprudence, Law and Identity, Feminist Political Philosophy, Black Political Thought, Legal Education and Critical Pedagogy as well as Critical Theories of Human Rights and Constitutionalism. Modiri has served as the Editor-in-chief of the South African Journal on Human Rights (SAJHR) and he also edits the Faculty’s in-house occasional papers series, the PULP Fictions. He has been a Faculty member of Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy Africa Regional Workshop held in Cape Town.  He has also held a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), University of the Witwatersrand, and was selected as an Inaugural Fellow in the Atlantic Fellowship for Racial Equity Programme (2018-2019) hosted by Columbia University and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He was also awarded the 2019 Africa Oxford Law Visiting Fellowship. Modiri is also a member of the Section 11 Committee on Equality at the South African Human Rights Commission.