Thina holds a PhD in African Studies (University of Edinburgh) and a Masters in Local Government Studies (University of Birmingham). Thina uses an interdisciplinary approach to the study of politics and policy, that is underpinned by her interest in employing qualitative research and organisational ethnography to study local government bureaucracies in South Africa. Such an approach has the potential of significantly contributing to a much needed insight into the complex and multi-dimensional ongoing process of state formation in Africa in general. Her key research interests in local government studies focuses on examining how South African bureaucracies work in practice; the politics of precarity in representative local democracy and its implications of the dialectical relationship between the party and the state from ‘below’; and lastly the conceptualisation of partisan bureaucracies that are permeated by the co-existence of formal and informal practices of governance and the impact that such practices have on the implementation of policies and legislation.
Email: thinan@pari.org.za
