Sindiso is a South African legal scholar and socio-legal researcher specializing in legal pluralism, indigenous African law, gender rights, and constitutionalism. She is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves concurrently as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Public Law at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She earned her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from UCT, and both her Master of Studies in Legal Research and Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in socio-legal studies from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Early in her career, she served as a judicial law clerk to Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Her academic research employs empirical and participatory methodologies to evaluate how marginalized populations navigate state law and living customary frameworks. Before her appointment at UMass Amherst, she worked closely with rural communities as a senior researcher for the Rural Women’s Action Research Programme at UCT, focusing on dispute resolution, land tenure, and women’s property rights. Her extensive socio-legal publications include Access to Justice and Human Security: Cultural Contradictions in Rural South Africa (2018) and Alter-Native Constitutionalism: Common-ing ‘Common’ Law, Transforming Property in South Africa (2026).
She is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Law and Society Association (LSA).