Portfolio

Case studies: what was asked, what was done, what changed.

A closer look at selected research and leadership work — the context behind each project, the approach taken and what it produced. For the full research programme, see Projects.

01 · Research

2026 — Honours dissertation, Nelson Mandela University

Algorithms of Trust

South African AI policy is written for a citizen who is assumed to understand, accept and benefit from automated systems. Public discussion online describes a different person entirely.

Approach

Assembled a corpus of public digital narratives about artificial intelligence in South Africa.
Applied Critical Discourse Analysis in Fairclough's tradition to the 2024 National AI Policy Framework and the withdrawn 2026 Draft AI Policy.
Compared the policy's imagined user against the self-descriptions of actual users.

Outcome

A working account of the imagined-user problem in South African AI governance, and a method other researchers can reuse to test whose experience a framework is actually designed around.

02 · Research

2025 — Undergraduate research strand

Digital trust in healthcare decision-making

Patients and clinicians rarely evaluate a digital health tool on accuracy alone. They evaluate whether someone will answer for the outcome.

Approach

Qualitative interviewing and thematic analysis with students and health-service users.
Mapped where trust attaches: to institutions and clinicians rather than to the system itself.
Translated findings into design implications for accountability and disclosure.

Outcome

A clearer articulation of trust as an institutional relationship, now feeding the theoretical framework of the Honours work.

03 · Leadership

Nelson Mandela University student organisation

Ri Vha Venda — Acting President and Deputy Treasurer

A cultural student organisation needing steady governance, financial discipline and a programme that members would actually turn up to.

Approach

Led the executive as Acting President, chairing planning and representing the organisation to the university.
Managed budgeting and financial reporting as Deputy Treasurer.
Coordinated cultural and community events across a diverse student membership.

Outcome

Sustained membership engagement with transparent finances — and practical experience of the negotiation, consultation and accountability that the research writes about in theory.

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