Biography: I am a third year graduate student at the University Minnesota majoring in African History. I was born and educated in Zimbabwe. I enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe from 1995 to 2001 where I obtained a BA in History and Economic History, a BA Honors in History and an MA in African History. From fall 2001 to mid 2005, I was a Lecturer in the Department of History and Development Studies at the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe. I am a member of a number of professional organizations such as the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), the Conference for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), and the African Studies Association (ASA). I also have strong teaching, research, and advocacy interests in gender, labor issues, human rights and democracy, peace and conflict resolution, and African electoral politics. My latest publications are, "The 1987 National Unity Accord and its Aftermath: A Case of Peace without Reconciliation?" (2005) and "The Zimbabwean Entrapment: An Analysis of the Nexus between Domestic and Foreign Policies in a 'Collapsing' Militant State, 1990-2006", (2006).

Research Focus: My proposed dissertation research analyzes African workers' health conditions in colonial Zimbabwe's mining industry. I am focusing on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and aim to show that the cheap labor pool imperative, rather than the need for a good public health profile, are largely influenced by colonial anti-syphilis laws. My tentative working hypothesis is that through an examination of the historical evolution of preventive measures against syphilis public health policies can be used as a window to understand prevailing social tensions, power dynamics and economic interests. My research will explore how Africans and their therapeutic systems reacted and responded to syphilis, a disease that weakened their bodies and compromised their labor and reproductive capacities. The study also analyzes how different African socio-economic groups such as migrant laborers, commercial sex workers, chiefs, priests, parents, and young men and women debated, struggled, and negotiated among themselves and with colonial authorities to ensure both bodily and community health in the new disease environment. The negotiations were multifaceted; they entailed moral imagination, restriction of movement, and violation of personal integrity through intrusive physical examinations by mineworkers and medical personnel.