Nicky Falkof is a writer and academic based in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she holds the SARCHi Chair in Critical Diversity Studies and heads up the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies.

Her research is primarily concerned with race and anxiety in South Africa, with a specific interest in the forms, mythologies and consequences of white fear. She has secondary interests in gender, popular media and culture, moral panic and the social geography of global south cities, particularly Joburg. She has written on topics as diverse as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, luxury beauty spas, satanist murders and Joburg’s notorious ‘Parktown prawns’.

Nicky has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium, part of Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Masters in Critical Theory from Sussex University.