Liepollo Lebohang Pheko

Liepollo Lebohang Pheko is an activist scholar, researcher , public intellectual , development practitioner with interests in Afrikan political economy, States& nationhood, international trade & global financial governance, feminisation of poverty, regional integration and impacts of globalisation on labour migration. Senior Research Fellow at research and policy advocacy think tank - Trade Collective and Adjunct Research Associate at Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute (TMALI). She has taught International Trade and developed a course on Afrikan Feminism at TMALI where she is a founding faculty member and Research Associate. She has taught as visiting faculty at several institutions across South Africa and beyond including Zambia, Mexico, Sweden , the US and the UK on issues of political economics, human mobility, regionalism and post modern development theory. Pheko’s work is grounded in a race, class and feminist analysis and she is committed to grounding academic research in community struggles & contexts. She has spent many years as a community and movement mobiliser and continues to travel globally giving technical and solidarity support to various social , feminist and community movements and considers this central to her academic praxis. She is proudly associated with a wave of unapologetic African feminism that is grounded in heterodox thinking on social transformation, reframing the State and rethinking economics in the context of human mobility. A Board member of several academic and development organisations including the International Network on Migration and Development, Action Research Network for a Wellbeing Economy in Africa , the Association of African Trade Practitioners and is currently deputy convener [and a founding member] of the Pan African Network in Defense of Migrant Rights. Pheko has led several delegations to forums such as the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and the African Union. Recent publications Africa Rising’: A false economic imagination?. In MISTRA, Changing Economic Balances In Africa.Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).269-304, 2016, Socio-Political Developments In South Africa- Reflections On The Myth Of Reconciliation, Economía del conocimiento, conocimiento indígena y migración. Migración y desarrollo, 13(25), pp.91-115, The CFTA and TFTA: Are they the future of Afrikan Regionalism and Unity. The Thinker, Volume 69, 42-48.