Lu is a PhD student at the Institute of Development Studies. She is active in Southern African intersectional advocacy, particularly concerning grassroots gender-based violence (GBV) activism and online and offline social justice education.

Lu completed a Master’s degree in Gender, Violence and Conflict at the University of Sussex, where her dissertation applied an intersectional and womanist analysis of Black Lives Matter in mainstream Western media articulation and prior to that, completed a Gender Studies degree focusing on gender UN Security resolutions such as 1325 in the Global Africa and also re-imagining decolonial spaces for participatory activism in Africa.

Continuing from her strong interest in social movements, Lu’s research concerns gendered African discourse. Specifically, Lu’s research is interested in understanding if South African GBV digital activist discourse can provide insights as to how better justice and rehabilitation can be provided for victims of GBV. Furthermore, she is exploring ways in which civil society and government can collaboratively work together to formulate citizen informed GBV policy. Lu’s research is guided by the question, “What knowledge can be applied from South African GBV social media activism that can be integrated into the current GBV legislature to encourage accountable enforcement of GBV policy?”.

In an era where the lines between the two are not so clear cut, Lu seeks to understand how the successes of informal discourse and justice online, can be translated into offline policy – narrowing the gap between policy and implementation to help aid the Southern African GBV crisis.

Inka Barnett and Linda Waldman are her PhD supervisors.