Ms Min'enhle Ncube

Min’enhle is an anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at the EthicsLab. Her research examines how emerging technologies, data and systems of classification reshape healthcare and social life in Africa, with attention to whose knowledge becomes legible within technological systems and the epistemologies these systems privilege, marginalise or exclude.

Her doctoral research explored artificial intelligence and digital technologies in maternal healthcare in Zambia. Drawing on multisited ethnographic and archival research across Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands, she examined how contemporary technologies for identifying and classifying maternal risk are shaped by longer histories of medicine, infrastructure and data collection. Tracing connections between European technology development and African healthcare contexts, her work contributes to North–South dialogues on technological innovation, knowledge production and ethics.

At the EthicsLab, Min’enhle extends these questions into genomics and emerging health technologies, examining the ethical and epistemic implications of population classification and the translation of human differences into biomedical data. Her research explores how participatory approaches might enable communities to shape the categories through which they are represented in scientific and technological systems. Across her work, she advocates for socially and historically grounded approaches to innovation that recognise epistemic plurality and diverse forms of care.

Research interests: Anthropology of technology; AI and digital health; genomics and ethics; critical data studies; medical anthropology; classification and epistemology; maternal and reproductive health; ethics of care; African knowledge systems.

Research areas: Emerging health technologies • AI and datafication • Genomics • Classification • Digital health • Ethnography • Epistemology • Ethics of care