Session 2 / Akani Shimange

Akani Shimange is a black agender queer person that has been involved in sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics work for almost a decade. They are driven by their passion for improving the lives of transgender and gender variant individuals, especially young people. As a trans gender individual, Akani truly enjoys organizing around gender diversity to affect social change. They founded Matimba in 2018 after years of working with and for organisations that do trans specific work in South Africa.

“I have two passions in this life, questioning the relevance of binary, cis-hetro normative systems and learning from children. Matimba allows me to do both those things everyday.”

Session 3 / Dee Marco

Derilene (Dee) Marco is a lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD from the Department of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University. Her research deals with apartheid and post-apartheid cinema and sensibilities of the “rainbow nation” as seen in post-apartheid cultural works. Dee is currently working on a new research project that deals with mothers and notions of mothering and radical care as political and agential in South Africa - before apartheid, during and after it. Dee teaches courses such as Postcolonial Media in the Global South and Global Cinema. Dee is also a feminist, a mother, partner and avid wellness provocateur who loves books, yoga and quiet moments wherever and whenever they can be found. 

Session 3 / Kathleen Ebersohn

Kathleen Ebersohn works as a researcher and writer and has a Masters in Sociology by dissertation from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a skilled qualitative researcher with broad interests in gender, race, social justice, health and education. Kathleen has worked as a communications specialist and researcher in a variety of settings with non-governmental organisations, community based organisations, corporates, the public health sector and international donors. She is also a co-host of the podcast, Mamas With Attitude, and contributes regularly, as a writer, to various platforms such as New Frame and Black Coconut. She is currently working on a children’s book. Kathleen lives in Johannesburg with her partner and their two small children.

Session 4 / Maneo Mohale

Maneo Refiloe Mohale is a South African editor, feminist writer and poet. Their work has appeared in various local and international publications, including Jalada, Prufrock, The Beautiful Project, The Mail & Guardian, spectrum.za, and others. They’ve served as a contributing editor for The New York Times and i-D, among others. They were Bitch Media’s first Global Feminism Writing Fellow in their inaugural 2016 class, where they wrote on race, media, sexuality and survivorship. In 2017, they were Managing Editor of Platform Media, where they also served as Acting Arts Editor for the Mail and Guardian for four editions of M&G Friday and later moved on to be a Senior Media Co-ordinator for Arts and Culture at Collective Media. They have been long-listed twice for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology Award, and their debut collection of poetry, Everything is a Deathly Flower was published with uHlanga press in September 2019. In 2020, they were shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, the youngest finalist of that year.

Session 5 / Danielle Bowler

Danielle Bowler is a feminist culture editor, writer and musician, based in Johannesburg. Her work focuses on the intersections of art, popular culture and feminist theory. Currently at New Frame, she is the former Managing Editor of ELLE Magazine and has bylines in Mail & Guardian, Eyewitness News, Cosmopolitan, Africa is a Country and Superbalist, among other publications. Danielle has an MA in Politics and International Studies, focusing on developing a historical and philosophical framework to understand questions of coloured identity. She is also part of the team at Bloom, a platform for creative women entrepreneurs and freelancers, with Nandi Dlepu and Larissa Elliot.