ACADEMIC PROFILE:
PhD, 2022, University of the Western Cape.
Bio:
Fernanda Pinto de Almeida is a lecturer in Sociology and co-convenor of the MAPSA programme at Stellenbosch University. She is a scholar of media, leisure and urban order. Her first book project investigates the social implications of state regulation of media, particularly through censorship and the policing of public space, as well as the role of state bureaucracy in shaping cultural publics in early twentieth century South Africa.
Before joining Stellenbosch, she was a senior researcher at the Centre for Humanities Research, at the University of the Western Cape, where she lectured in undergraduate courses in History and Sociology. She served on the advisory board of Revista Africa, of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Sao Paulo and is part of the editorial collective of the international journal Communication, Culture and Critique.
In 2025, Fernanda will teach classes on postgraduate research design and proposal writing, sociological imaginaries in Southern Africa and feminist approaches to popular culture and is interested in supervising student projects that address sociologies of media, public sphere and popular culture.
Selected Publications:
Journal Articles
Pinto de Almeida, F., 2024. Tuskegee in the Transvaal: the moving image archive of Solomon Plaatje. In: C. Ouma, K. Mkhize and M. Haarhoff, eds. Black Archival Imagination. Durham: Duke University Press. (forthcoming)
Pinto de Almeida, F., 2023. Policing pastime: child audiences, cinema and segregation of leisure in South Africa. In: U. Mukherjee, ed. Childhoods & Leisure: Cross-Cultural and Inter-Disciplinary Dialogues. Palgrave.
Pinto de Almeida, F., 2022. A “Poor Man’s Pleasure:” The cinema house and its publics in twentieth century South Africa. Critical Arts, 3&4.
Pinto de Almeida, F. and Erasmus, A., 2022. Cinema and the idea of fieldwork in Sol Plaatje’s journeys. History in Africa, 49, pp.39-63.
Pinto de Almeida, F., 2022. The drive-in and the desegregation of cinemas in Apartheid Cape Town. Journal of Southern African Studies, 48(5).
Pinto de Almeida, F., 2021. Seeing with the Mother theatre: the sea and the cinemas of Cape Town’s city centre. Social Dynamics, 47(1).
