middle class
entrepreneurship
post-apartheid South Africa
Lieve de Coninck (1985) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology. She is part of the Globalizing Culture and the Quest for Belonging: Ethnographies of the Everyday programme group of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. Her research focuses on the cultural practice of middle class by looking at the relation of young, urban professionals in South Africa with entrepreneurship.
Her project investigates how young, urban professionals in South Africa take up entrepreneurship in a global economy that promotes private business. On the one hand, young achievers are encouraged to start up enterprises, notably through ‘business incubators’ that provide support. On the other hand, they are often torn between professional ambition and social pressures such as financial obligations towards kin and suspicions of corruption. To understand how the pursuit of success is handled in the context of these tensions, the project develops a case study of clients of business incubators.
She is teaching in the undergraduate programmes of Cultural Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (ASW).
She has a keen interest in inclusive teaching practices and critical pedagogy. She has coordinated a research project on experiences of in- and exclusion among students in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences bachelor programme in 2017, in cooperation with students of the Programme Committee and the student association (Pegasus). She has also organised workshops on inclusive teaching for colleagues at UvA and Erasmus MC.
Her master's thesis (2009, cum laude) focused on the relation between consumption and identity for young black middle class in post-apartheid South Africa.
Between 2008 and 2012 she worked as a policy adviser and researcher on several projects regarding youth issues for municipal and national government, as well as for several NGO's, before landing a position as a study adviser and programme coordinator for UvA. She has been teaching since 2013 and is currently also involved in developing inclusive teaching practices within the social science departments.
With fellow anthropologist Leon van de Reep she hosts a blog about Africa-stereotyping called Afrikaanse Toestanden.
REC building B room 5.16
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
1018 WV Amsterdam
l.deconinck@uva.nl