Research & Publications

Dr Duduzile Ndlovu is an innovative researcher combining arts based approaches with research for more ethical research engagements, communicating research to reach a wider audience beyond the academy, and contributing to decolonising research. Dr Dudu translated her thesis to poetry for the study participants  to more meaningfully engage and critique the thesis produced. She has further developed the use of poetry in research to give participants the space to influence the research shift researcher/participant power dynamics, through a Newton Advanced Fellowship (2018-2020). She has several publications including an edited book on the use of poetry in research. She has taught postgraduate research methods classes in the UK, Germany, Sweden and South Africa.

Life Expectancy

Publication Date: 02/06/2021

A poem reflecting on the legacy of colonialism.
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Violence and Generational Trauma: Gukurahundi Memory Today

Publication Date: 26/05/2021

In this blog, I  explore the ways in which traumatic memory of violence has travelled across space and time. Furthermore the memory is being transmitted across generations in different ways. A short glimpse into my PhD research.
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Limpopo Crossings

Publication Date: 04/05/2021

A blog about the impact of COVID pandemic related restrictions to border crossings on migrants' lives in South Africa
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Liberating Comparisons: Reconsidering Comparative Approaches

Publication Date: 25/06/2021

What is comparison? How can it shape our thinking and research? Can it help us think in new ways about the world around us?  In this exciting new e-book, sixteen researchers from across the humanities and social sciences come together to reflect on comparison, and the role that it can play in research and practice today.
 

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Moving Words: Poetry in/as Method

Publication Date: 23/09/2021

This is a volume I edited where contributors  share how and why they use and used poetry in their research and teaching. It is an open access book that came out of my Newton Advanced Fellowship that I held from 2018-2020. If you have ever been curious about the use of poetry in research this is a good introductory text.
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Decolonising writing – situating insider-outsider researchers in writing about COVID-19

Publication Date: 23/10/2020

This book, part of a series of three Rapid Responses, explores dimensions of creativity and ethics, highlighting their connected-ness. It has three parts: the first covers creative approaches to researching. The second considers concerns around research ethics and ethics more generally, and the final part addresses different ways of approaching creativity and ethics through collaboration and co-creation.
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Imagining Zimbabwe as home: ethnicity, violence and migration

Publication Date: 30/09/2020

Migration debates tend to focus on the numbers of people moving, whether they are economic migrants or asylum seekers, deserving or not of protection. This categorization usually rests on national identity, necessitating simplified one-dimensional representations. Ndlovu uses a case study of Zimbabwean migrants memorializing Gukurahundi in Johannesburg to highlight the ways in which migration narratives can be more complex and how they may shift over time. She presents Gukurahundi and the formation of the MDC in Zimbabwe, along with xenophobic violence in South Africa, as examples of the ways that the meanings of national and ethnic identities are contested by the migrants and influenced by political events across time and space.
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The Migrant Nurse Dilemma (Creative Intervention)

Publication Date: 27/03/2020

Poetic transcription of an interview conducted by Becky Walker in 2015 with a professional nurse as part of a study funded by MRC/DFID/ESRC/Wellcome Trust Health Systems Research Initiative (MR/M002160/1) through a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. I was involved in the fieldwork for the study.
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How poetry can represent research

Publication Date: 21/03/2018

Poetry is one way that researchers, myself included, have tried to involve participants in making sense of research outcomes; it is also seen by some as a way to foster more humane interactions between a research subject and researcher. The potential benefit of using poetry as part of research is something I continue to ponder. There are different ways poetry can humanise research: it helps to infuse otherwise technical or verbose research reports with emotion.
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Violence and Memory in Breaking the Silence of Gukurahundi: A Case Study of the ZAM in Johannesburg, South Africa

Publication Date: 18/09/2014

Following conflict, societies are confronted by the question of how they should deal with their violent and traumatic past. The need for testimony and public witness to experiences of violence has been documented in different studies. This chapter examines how victims make sense of a violent past that has not been officially acknowledged. The Gukurahundi is socio-political violence, which occurred in the southern and western parts of Zimbabwe in the 1980s. It is estimated that 20,000 people were killed and some disappeared over a period of about 7 years (1981–1987). Since the end of the violence no apology or restitution has been offered to the victims. The government has prevented any remembering or commemoration of the violence. Using the Zimbabwe Action Movement (ZAM) as a case study the chapter explores the ways in which people seek wellbeing through inserting memories of their past into the public narrative. The researcher attended ZAM meetings, conducted in-depth interviews, reviewed organisational material, as well as their recorded songs. Membership of ZAM, for the second-generation victims, living in Johannesburg, facilitated coping with the violence through providing space to speak out using music and plays. It also provided a space for mutual support among members focusing not only on the past experiences but also the present predicament of being a migrant in South Africa.
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