Amanda Alexander is a doctoral candidate in International & Global history and a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa). Before coming to Columbia, Amanda worked as a Research Fellow at CCS for two years. There, she facilitated media, writing and photography workshops for activists and conducted research primarily focused on issues of race and representation within post-apartheid struggles for land and housing.    

Amanda is an associate producer and news editor for Pacifica Radio’s Wake Up Call (WBAI 99.5 FM), and she produced a radio documentary on racial profiling of Brooklyn youth in 2007. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Feminist Africa, We Write, Mail & Guardian, Pambazuka News, and several edited volumes. In 2006 she co-edited a special double issue of the Journal of Asian and African Studies with the theme of “Problematizing Resistance.” She is co-editor, with Andile Mngxitama and Nigel Gibson, of Biko Lives: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).    

Amanda has conducted research in the Africa divisions of Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Center for International Development. She has also worked on youth programming and advocacy with Africa Action, the Senegalese National Youth Council, and the Malawi AIDS Counseling and Resource Organization. Amanda studied Government and African studies at Harvard, culminating in her B.A. honors thesis “‘Not the Democracy We Struggled For’: The Landless People’s Movement and the Politicization of Urban-Rural Division in South Africa.” While at Harvard, Amanda worked on the editorial staffs of Transition magazine and the Harvard African.