Rebekah Lee awarded John Fell Fund grant for new research on road accidents in South Africa
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The African Studies Centre is pleased to announce that Rebekah Lee, Associate Professor in African Studies, has been awarded a University of Oxford John Fell Fund grant (Main Award) for her project, ‘The Politics of Injury, Care and Compensation in South Africa’s Road Accident Fund’.
This project takes as its focus South Africa’s Road Accident Fund (RAF), a national compensatory system established in 1997 to provide financial cover for victims of road accidents and their families. Conceived as a form of social insurance within a wider politics of redistribution, the RAF has become one of the most contested institutions of social policy in post-apartheid South Africa – criticised for inefficiency, corruption and insolvency, yet continuing to deliver vital, if uneven, forms of support. The study examines how ‘injury’, ‘care’, and ‘compensation’ are defined and contested through the RAF’s bureaucratic and medico-legal processes, including through the enactment of professional expertise in the assessment of bodily trauma as well as legal disputes between family members over RAF claims. The project explores the extent to which enduring inequalities of race, class, gender and generation are reflected in, and actively shape, these intimate and contentious body politics.
This 12-month pilot project (April 2026-March 2027) combines archival and court-records research, fieldwork including exploratory ethnography and oral interviews, and professional networking.
I am very grateful to the Fell Fund for this award to support vital exploratory research and the formation of new academic and professional networks. The pilot project will generate proof-of-concept findings and partnerships that will lay the foundation for future external grant applications and the development of an interdisciplinary, multi-sited and inter-sectoral research programme on the road accident crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, with the potential for significant policy impact. Professor Rebekah Lee
Related publication
Open access: 'Crash Narratives and Accidental Archives: Rethinking Road Safety in South Africa’ - Journal of Southern African Studies
