LawTransform Global Fellow, Jackie Dugard, is on the steering committee of the newly established Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS). It is the first research institute of its kind in the global South and draws on the intellectual resources of Wits University, and partner institutions in South Africa and beyond. Although there are a number of centres for the study of inequality worldwide, they are almost exclusively in the global north, and in the United Kingdom, and United States in particular. The centre aims to address the distinct drivers and characteristics of inequality in the South. Jackie emphasised that the motivation behind creating the centre was to establish a multidisciplinary research centre in the Global South that focuses on inequality from a Global South perspective.
SCIS is an interdisciplinary and intersectional research and policy institute. It will ensure that the project objectives and the work undertaken by the various research initiatives and activities will result in a substantive outcome: an evidence based progressive policy programme to overcome inequality in South Africa, and advance our understanding of inequality in the global South.