Professor Lindiwe Dovey

Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Creative Practice at SOAS University of London, which she joined in September 2007 as a lecturer. 

She is a writer, researcher, teacher, filmmaker, and film curator, and her work aims to combine scholarship and creative practice in mutually enlightening ways. From 2019 to 2025, she was the Principal Investigator of the project "African Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies", which was funded by a 2-million-euro European Research Council grant. As part of this project, Lindiwe directed two documentary films: Out of the Box: The Screen Worlds of Judy Kibinge (2023) and From One Woman to Another: The Screen Worlds of Bongiwe Selane (2023), which explore the work of two of Africa's leading filmmakers. These films are examples of Lindiwe's passion for creative practice research (she founded the SOAS Practice Research Network), and are complemented by her current research on women filmmakers and writers, feminist filmmaking and creative practice, and ethical leadership.

In the past Lindiwe has made film adaptations of literature (for example, of Olive Schreiner and Vladimir Nabokov’s writing), and has also reflected on film adaptation in depth in her scholarly work – for example, in her first book, African Film and Literature (Columbia UP, 2009), as well as in numerous journal articles and book chapters.

As a film festival founder, director and curator, Lindiwe has been instrumental in raising the profile and visibility of African film in the UK. She was the Co-Founder of Film Africa, for which she was also the Co-Director and the Film Programme Director in 2011 and 2012, and she remains on the Advisory Board; and she co-founded the Cambridge African Film Festival, which she directed and curated for many years. With colleagues Lindiwe has also co-curated film seasons exploring the similarities and differences between film cultures and industries in different parts of the world (such as Gender Agenda! and Mixed Roots at BerthaDocHouse). In her scholarly work she has combined in-depth research into the exhibition, circulation, and curation of film with reflections on her own experiences of founding, directing, and curating film festivals, most notably in her book Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals (Palgrave, 2015), and in articles in journals such as Screen, Cinema Journal, Scope, Jump Cut, Journal of African Cultural Studies, and Feminist Africa.

Lindiwe was born in South Africa and moved seven times between South Africa and Australia as a child. She then won scholarships to study at Harvard University, where she graduated with a BA Honors in 2001 (with highest honors in Film Theory and Production, and English Literature), and at the University of Cambridge, where she graduated with a PhD in 2005 (in African Cinema and Literature). She has been the recipient of many awards, including a 2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, the 2011 SOAS Director's Teaching Prize, and a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize for outstanding scholarship. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and was a keynote speaker for the Aurora Women’s Leadership Development programme in 2022, 2023, and 2025. From January 2023 to December 2025 she was the SOAS College of Humanities Deputy Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange), and the SOAS Deputy Dean for Research Culture. 

Lindiwe's publications can be accessed through SOAS' Worktribe research repository.