I am an historical anthropologist. My research explores Southern Africa’s liberation struggles in exile and how they are remembered. Many of my publications examine camps administered by liberation movements in the frontline states – especially camps run by the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO. I have also published on what it meant to be a refugee during Southern Africa’s liberation struggles and am now completing a monograph on the interplay between national liberation and Christian faith through the life of a Namibian exile/refugee.

This research informs how I teach. For the past decade I have taught UFS undergraduates ‘the anthropology of identity`, working together with them to consider how ‘who we are’ reflects histories of colonialism and decolonisation – histories that we have internalised, but also may contest and shift through how we lead our lives. I supervise honours, MA, and PhD students as they explore their own research interests under this broad anthropological/historical theme.

Monographs:

National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Remembering St. Therese. Windhoek: Out of Africa Press, 2003.

Key Publications since 2020:

“SWAPO’s 1976 Crisis and Nordic Transnational Solidarities: The Ailongas’ Detainee Letters.” In Leila Koivunen and Raita Merivirta, eds. Colonial Aspects of Finnish-Namibian Relations (1870–1990). Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society (forthcoming in 2024).

“Liberation Movement Camps in Southern Africa.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.ORE_AFH-01216.R1. (forthcoming in 2024).           

“Defining and Aiding ‘the Namibian Refugee’: A History of the Chaplaincy to Namibians in Exile, 1974-76.” Canadian Journal of African Studies, Special Issue on African Refuge 55, no. 3 (2021): 543-561. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1869049.

“Nationalism in Namibia.” Scholarly Review Essay. African Studies Review 63, no. 4 (2020): 927-937. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.89.

“SWAPO’s Struggle Children and Exile Home-Making: The Refugee Biography of Mawazo Nakadhilu.” African Studies Review, Forum on African Refugee History 63, no. 3 (2020): 593-615. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2019.89.

“Dissident Refugees: A History of 200 Namibians in Zambia, 1977-89.” Journal of Southern African Studies 46, no. 5 (2020): 863-879. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2020.1768685.

ANTC1624: Understanding Ourselves and Others (first-year)

ANTD2614: The Anthropology of Identity (second-year)

SCSCI 2612: Social Science in Africa (second-year)

ANTU3725, Unit 2: The Anthropology of Humanitarianism (third-year)

ANTI8644: The Anthropology of Identity (honours)

ANTC6808: History, Theory and Methods in Anthropology (honours)

RMFT7900: Violence and Memory: Approaches to Studying Violent Pasts and their Aftermaths (Masters)