Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon

Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Dr Wilhelm-Solomon is currently an AfOx Oxford Department of International Development Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme. 

Matthew is the author of the narrative non-fiction book titled "The Blinded City: Ten Years in Inner-City Johannesburg" (Picador Africa, 2022). The book covers themes such as unlawful occupation, eviction, and migration. He holds a master's and doctorate in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, which he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. During his doctoral studies, he explored HIV/AIDS treatment programs in post-conflict northern Uganda.

Matthew has contributed as a co-editor to several collections, including "Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and "Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes" (Duke University Press, 2020). His work has been published in leading international journals such as Medical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Society and Space.

Currently, he is researching Land and Climate Justice in Brazil and South Africa, which he will be exploring through the AfOx fellowship at Oxford in collaboration with his host, Prof Jocelyn Alexander. While in Oxford, Matthew aims to work on a project titled "Land and Climate Justice: A Transatlantic Perspective." The project proposes that a transatlantic perspective can connect local political and legal histories with the planetary perspective needed to address the climate crisis. Matthew will be using his time in Oxford to conduct research that will help him gather evidence to demonstrate the relationship between land and climate justice from a transatlantic perspective.

• 2022 “The Blinded City: Ten Years in Inner-city Johannesburg.” Pan Macmillan South Africa/Picador Africa.
• 2021. “Dispossession as depotentiation.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39 (6), 976-993 as part of the special edition ‘Dwelling in Liminalities’ with guest editors AbdouMaliq Simone and Michele Lancione.
• 2020. “The City Otherwise: The Deferred Emergency of Occupation in Inner-City Johannesburg” Cultural Anthropology, 35, (3): 404-434
• 2017. “Crossing the Borders of Humanitarianism: MSF in inner-city Johannesburg” Urban Forum 2017, 28 (1): 5-26. (with Jens Pedersen)
• 2017. “Decoding dispossession: Eviction and urban regeneration in Johannesburg's dark buildings.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 2017, 37(3), 378-395