WiCDS is based in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Through interdisciplinary postgraduate education and research, WiCDS aims to build capacity to meet the challenges of diverse societies, especially in post-apartheid South Africa. WiCDS was initially started as Intercultural and Diversity Studies of Southern Africa (iNCUDISA) at the University of Cape Town and moved to Wits in 2014.

For the past nine years, WiCDS has successfully conducted annual international conferences that have brought together scholars, students, practitioners, artists and activists from different areas of the world. Past conferences have resulted in book volumes such as: Decolonising the Human: Reflections from Africa on difference and oppression (2021), published by Wits University Press. Journal special issues have also come out of WiCDS annual conferences, for instance: (Re)Imagining Liberations: Institutionalised Despair*Critical Hope: Vol. 2, No. 1, June 2019 of International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies on JSTOR. WiCDS has thus created a reputation for advancing the humanities, social sciences and social justice.