Dr Natasha Shivji received her PhD in History from New York University, New York. She joined UCT Historical Studies department in 2023. Before joining UCT, she was the Director of the Institute for Research in Intellectual Histories of Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and a Post Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. She has taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Dodoma in Tanzania. Natasha has also served as co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies and Africa Book review editor for the Journal of African and Asian studies. Her research interests include Histories of the Indian Ocean world particularly pre-nineteenth century. She is also interested in questions of nation, land and state formation in Africa.

Current research interests:

• African Intellectual history and histories of pan Africanist thought and praxis.
• Oceanic and coastal histories (extending into the hinterland).

Select academic publications:

• “Circuits of Production and Channels of State: Pastoralists and the state in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya (1910-1958)” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy edited by Toyin Falola and Samuel Oloruntoba, 351-374. Palgrave McMillan. (2020)
• “Universalism in Unevenness: Writing History at the Hill” Small Axe 27,3: 84-94. (2023)

• “Situating the City in the Global or the Global in the City.” Review of Revolutionary State-making in Dar es Salaam: African Liberation and the Global Cold War, 1961-1974, by George Roberts. H-Diplo Roundtable XXV-4, 13-16 (2023).

• “Small Holder Agriculture and Advocacy Groups in Tanzania.” Africa World Press/ Trust Africa in From Rhetoric to Policy Action: An Analysis of Agricultural Policy Reform in Africa. (2011)