Staff profile

Bryan Kauma is a historian of Southern Africa. His research interests focus on Southern Africa's food and environmental history from the pre-colonial past to the present. His work shows how (African) food and indigenous African crops are political, and embedded in the social, economic, political and cultural everyday lives of African society. He is interested in the way food and crops extend the lens of re-examining Africa’s past, unpacking the myriad topical, emotive, and contested themes including race, colonialism, agrarian systems and African peasantry, food security, indigeneity, and agency.

He is currently working on my first monograph, which examines the social, environmental and political development of African small grains – sorghum and millet – in Zimbabwe, c.1880-2017. He welcomes supervision applications from students interested in researching agrarian, social and environmental history in Southern Africa and food (nutrition, food security and culinary cultures) history-related topics.