Sinethemba Makanya is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class (RGC) at the University of Johannesburg. She also serves as an academic coordinator at the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care at the University of Witwatersrand. Makanya recently completed her PhD in Medical Humanities and Psychology at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (Wiser), University of Witwatersrand. Her thesis, Ukugula Kwabantu: The constructions of mental health by traditional healers in a peri-urban context, allowed her to draw upon her concurrent roles as a scholar and traditional healer, focussing on constructions of reality, knowledge, the human and health, whilst centring an African paradigmatic worldview understood through her initiation into traditional healing. Her research interests centre around Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the application of their philosophies by practitioners (such as izinyanga and izangoma) in ways that strengthen theory from (and of) the Global South. She is also interested in how Indigenous Knowledge Systems and their practitioners can become active players in the transformation of curricula. Makanya was featured on the Mail and Guardian 200 Young South Africans List (2018) in the category of Science and Technology, for the contribution of her research in demystifying practices of traditional healing and (re)centring indigenous knowledges. She completed a Masters in Drama Therapy at New York University in 2012, and has lectured and supervised research at Drama for Life (University of Witwatersrand) and the University of Pretoria.