Asanda Benya is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. Her work focuses on the intersection of gender, class and race. Her current research is an ethnographic study of women underground miners in South Africa’s platinum mines and looks at the construction of gendered subjectivities of women in the underground mining world. She has published in labour and feminist journals in areas of women in mining, gender and the extractive industries, labour and social movements, social and economic justice. In 2015 her article the “Invisible Hands: Women in Marikana” won the Review of African Political Economy’s (RoAPE) Ruth First Award and in 2010 her article, “If you Don’t Hear the Bell, You’re Mince: Woman’s Story of Mining Underground” won the Labour Media Award for the Best Journal Article. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the African Humanities Program (AHP) fellowship (2019) and the Atlantic Fellowship on Racial Equity (AFRE) (2018).

She serves as an editorial board member of the Ubuntu Dialogues Project, and was also part of the South African Labour Bulletin’s Board. She is also active outside of the university as a board member of several national NGOs such as the Surplus People Project, the Bench-Marks Foundation’s Independent Problem-Solving Service Advisory Board, and Workers World Media Production.