Bhalisa 2024

The Bhalisa Network will host its 2024 meeting at the University of Amsterdam on 11th and 12th July, 2024.

The Bhalisa Network is an actively inter-disciplinary group of two hundred researchers, policy makers and implementers who work on the political, economic and moral effects of digital population registration systems. The word, bhalisa means, “cause to be written, or registered” in isiZulu. The group dates from the first meeting, in the Hague, in 2015, and it has hosted three subsequent meetings: at WISER in Johannesburg in 2017, Jesus and St Johns Colleges, Cambridge in 2019, and the Faculty of Law, Bergen in 2022. The group includes prominent researchers in engineering, including Ross J Anderson professor of computer security at Cambridge and Edinburgh; human rights lawyers, including Laura Bingham, Bronwen Manby and Gautam Bhatia, many anthropologists, like Ursula Rao and Vijayanka Nair; historians, like Eddy Higgs, Simon Szreter, Keren Weitzberg; political scientists, including Imke Harbers, Wendy Hunter and Marielle Debos; and sociologists, like Richard Banegas, Georges Eyenga and Jonathan Klaaren. Over a dozen of the young researchers on the list can best be described as working in the general field Science and Technology Studies, with a strong empirical focus on the new registration and credit surveillance infrastructures being developed in Asia and Africa. In addition to this interdisciplinary research strength, the network also includes some of the most prominent policy-makers including Joseph Atick, Alan Gelb and Jaap van der Straaten. Many officials, donors and funders are also active members of the network and participants in the email discussions, and biannual meetings, that animate the group.

Team members Vy Tran and Gulshan Banas will be presenting their ongoing PhD research at the Bhalisa Network’s 2024 meeting.