Jody Metcalfe is a South African Postdoctoral Researcher on the NWO Consortium Re-Presenting Europe, which examines popular culture, representation, diversity, and belonging in Europe and the Netherlands, where she works on WP 6, Braided Solidarities: Solidarity-in-difference: braiding identity, belonging and difference transnationally (Re-presenting Europe – Popular representations of diversity and belonging). 

Jody's research interests are focused on representation, belonging, identity construction, decolonisation and processes of racialisation in South Africa and Europe. Her PhD focused on representations of mixed-race identity in post-apartheid South African literature and utilised Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as the theoretical framework. She also focuses on the impacts of structural whiteness, white supremacy, processes of racialisation, legacies of colonial violence and intergenerational trauma on racialised people.

Before joining Utrecht University, Jody worked as a researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Germany, where she focused on the impacts of digital platform governance, artificial intelligence and digital harm on identity formation of ethnocultural and national minorities in Europe, specifically how minority women create, challenge and build self-representation in the digital sphere through digital resistance. She has also worked as a Critical Race Theory Fellow at the African American Policy Forum (United States), as a researcher at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (South Africa) and in various teaching and consulting capacities at the University of Cape Town (South Africa).

Jody holds a double PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Bayreuth, Germany and is the first person to hold a PhD in Intersectionality Studies from the Doctoral College of Intersectionality Studies/ Promotionskollegs für Intersektionalitätsstudien also at the University of Bayreuth. Her previous studies were completed in her home country South Africa, at the University of Cape Town, from which she holds a MPhil in Justice and Transformation in Political Science funded and completed as a Cannon Collins Scholar, a BSocSci (Hons.) in Gender and Transformation from the African Gender Institute and a BSocSci in Political Science and Gender Studies.