Dr Thandi Gamedze joined the SARChI Chair in Religion and Social Justice as a postdoctoral fellow in 2023, where her research focused on black theology and decolonial pedagogies and epistemologies. In 2025, she was appointed Senior Researcher at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice and Managing Editor of the African Journal of Gender and Religion.

A South African educator, theologian, cultural worker, and poet, Gamedze’s doctoral research adopted a transdisciplinary approach, integrating education and theology to examine the role of churches in both sustaining and challenging power dynamics related to race, gender, and class.

Link to her doctoral dissertation: https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/esploro/outputs/doctoral/The-church-as-classroom-ideological-reproduction/9944907007691

Her scholarly interests include black theology, liberation theology, social justice, education, and the arts, with a particular passion for poetry. She brings extensive experience from working across diverse contexts, including churches, universities, high schools, and community-based organisations.

Thandi Gamedze is on the board of Bottomup, an organisation championing young people making change within their communities, as well as Odanata Neighbourhood Assets, an organisation seeking the redress of spatial apartheid in Cape Town through nurturing just neighbourhood initiatives. She is also on the core advisory team for USPG’s FeAST programme, an initiative which supports young Anglican students in their scholarship.