Thuto Thipe is a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her primary fields of study include land tenure, African cities, local governance systems, race and racial formation, and feminist studies. Thipe earned her doctorate from Yale University in History and African American Studies where her PhD dissertation, “Black Freehold: Landownership in Alexandra Township, 1912-1979”, won the Yale Afro-American Cultural Center’s award for “Outstanding Graduate Research in the African Diaspora.” Thipe also holds degrees in History, Gender Studies, and Political Science from the University of Cape Town and Macalester College. She previously worked as a researcher in the UCT law faculty’s Centre for Law and Society.