Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah is an anthropologist and associate professor of innovation at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. There she directs the MPhil in Inclusive Innovation and teaches ethnography, qualitative research methods and thinking with Africa. She has recently set up the Light Lab at the GSB as an interdisciplinary space to explore knowledge infrastructure and knowledge politics, and is currently working on a book on African fibre optic connectivity.
Jess is a P-rated researcher (“future global leader”) with the South African National Research Foundation and was recently recognised with a national award for her interdisciplinary publications that remain grounded in the humanities and social sciences. She is an Iso Lomso Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University, an MSc from Oxford and a BSoc Sci from the University of Cape Town where she now teaches.
During her residency, Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah will draft the first version of her manuscript The Internet as the Southern Cross, to be published by University of California Press in a new series dedicated to digital infrastructures.
Structured around seven accessible essays, the book draws on three years of ethnographic research in Angola, Mauritius, and South Africa. It examines the intersections between digital infrastructures, global geopolitics, local dynamics of extraction, and imaginaries of the future. Its ambition is to propose a reconceptualization of digital futures, grounded in concrete situations where African actors invent, innovate, and act to shape the digital world.
During her stay in Nantes, she will also deepen her long-standing collaboration with Orange Marine, a key player in maritime digital infrastructure in Africa, through visits to Brest and the company’s headquarters—material that also informs one of the book’s chapters.
Read the Rest of World article on the Orange Marine cable ship
To read more: https://jahaj.net.za/