Presented by Prof Michelle Williams – HOD | Sociology – Wits University
Michelle Williams is a Professor and Head of Sociology and former Chairperson of the Global Labour University (GLU) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg.

Her research focuses on democracy, transformative socio-ecological projects, environmental sociology, alternative development and women’s participation in political and economic spaces.

She is working on a book (with Vishwas Satgar), Transformative Alternatives in the Age of Polycrisis: Worker Cooperatives, Commons, and Deep Democracy (forthcoming). Her other most recent book looked at a 95 year old cooperative in Kerala, India, Building Alternatives: the Story of India’s Oldest Worker Cooperative (co-authored with Dr. Thomas Isaac).

Her most recent co-edited volume (with Vishwas Satgar) was Destroying Democracy: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Rise of Authoritarian Politics, Wits University Press 2021, in which the threats to democracy are explored in South Africa, USA, Brazil, and India. She has worked on Kerala for over 20 years.