ACADEMIC PROFILE:

PhD, Harvard University, 2023.

Ongoing Interests: Renugan Raidoo is an urban anthropologist whose current book project concerns lifestyle estates in the Gauteng city region, their political economic origins, and their social and spatial consequences. Previous research has focused on secrecy and homophobia in urban Sierra Leone, and on sexuality and science policy in sub-Saharan Africa.

His research has been funded by awards from various sources at Harvard University, an Emslie Horniman Scholarship from the Royal Anthropological Institute/Sutasoma Award, and the Fulbright-Hays program. He holds an MPhil in social anthropology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, as well as a BA in anthropology and a BS (with honors) in chemistry from the University of Iowa.

His anthropological academic work has appeared in the edited volume Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Wits University Press, 2020), and in journals such as Africa: Journal of the International African Institute and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.

Along with Mehita Iqani, he is co-editor and contributor to Johannesburg from the Riverbanks: Navigating the Jukskei (HSRC Press, forthcoming Feb 2024), an interdisciplinary look at Johannesburg’s much-maligned river bringing together artists, natural scientists, social scientists, architects, and activists all interested in the river.

Renugan has served as a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University, as a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at both Brandeis University and Harvard University. 

Selected Publications: