Silindile Nanzile Mlilo

Silindile Mlilo is a migration scholar, researcher, and policy practitioner with over a decade of experience across academia, international organisations, and civil society. She is a Senior Research Associate in the Bridging Divides program at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Global Migration Institute. Her research examines migration governance, human rights, xenophobia, citizenship, belonging, and social cohesion, with current work exploring artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, and datafication in migration governance in Canada, Europe and Africa.

Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Manager at the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand, where she led research and managed Xenowatch, a project monitoring xenophobic discrimination and violence in South Africa. She is also co-founder of Meraki Afrique, a social enterprise aimed at advancing regional integration in Africa.

Silindile holds a PhD in Migration and Displacement from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her doctoral research examined postcolonial identity, citizenship, and belonging among descendants of non-Tswana migrants in Botswana. She is a 2024 Next Gen Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellow, a Young African Leaders Programme alumna at the European University Institute, and an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship alumna.

Selected publications

Mbeve, O., Mohapi, M., Mapurisa, A., Mlilo, S., Mokhitlinyane, I. P., Maja, L., Ledwaba, S. K., Mayisela, S., & Nkomo, T. S. (2025). “…the research… at PhD level, it gets quite lonely… (external link) ”: Creating a community of practice through a writing retreat. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, 9(2), 74–101.

Mlilo, S.N (2025) Constructing National Identity in Botswana: Historical and Contextual Developments from Colonial Times to the Present, The Journal of African Studies and Research Forum, 34(1), 61 -80

Muleya, E., & Mlilo, S.N. (2023). The use of ubuntu in social work practice: Lessons from the Gauteng Homeless Programme. In B. Mayaka, C. Uwihangana, & A. D. van Breda (Eds.), The ubuntu practitioner: Social work perspectives (pp. 85-113). International Federation of Social Workers.