About
I teach in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH), an undergraduate-only college within Michigan State University (MSU). I am a Core Faculty member of the MSU African Studies Center and a Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of the Free State (South Africa).
My research primarily focuses on the history of the southern African country of Lesotho. I write about the history of development, independence, nationalism, decolonization, and the history of the border between Lesotho and South Africa. My first book, entitled
Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development came out in 2018 from the University of Notre Dame Press. It is also available in Lesotho and South Africa as it was republished in 2020 by the Morija Museum and Archives (
http://www.morija.co.ls/museum/).
I also research and create digital projects on local history in the Lansing, MI area with my students. The links to my sites on Malcolm X in Lansing and Urban Renewal in Lansing are below.
I also write for media and popular publications on politics, economy, and development in Lesotho and southern Africa in general. Links to my author pages for South Africa’s
Mail and Guardian and
The Daily Maverick are below as well.
Other Publications
Book:
Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development University of Notre Dame Press, 2018 (re-published and made available in southern Africa by Morija Museum and Archives, Lesotho, 2020).
Articles (See CORE for copies of all articles):
[In Progress–revise and resubmit] Lesotho and the QwaQwa Ski Resort, 1975-1982: Border Disputes, National Sovereignty, and Deadly Foreign Policy in the Apartheid Era
[In Progress–revise and resubmit] Basotho and the Bantustans: Long-Term Impacts of Historical Borders on Borderlands Communities in QwaQwa and Lesotho
2022
A Transnational History of Stock Theft on the Lesotho-South Africa Border, Nineteenth Century to 1994
South African Historical Journal
2021
Bargaining with Land: Borders, Bantustans, and Sovereignty in 1970s and 1980s Southern Africa (co-authored with Chitja Twala),
Journal of Southern African Studies 47: 6, 993-1009.
2021:
Digitally Documenting Urban Renewal in Lansing, 1930s-1960s (co-authored with Claire Marks-Wilt)
Michigan Historical Review
2018:
Passports, Citizenship, Residency and Asylum: The Meanings of Decolonisation in Lesotho Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
2017:
Introduction: Localizing the History of Development in Africa International Journal of African Historical Studies 50:1 (2017): 1-9
2017:
Self-Help Development Projects and Conceptions of Independence in Lesotho, 1950s-1970s International Journal of African Historical Studies 50:1 (2017):11-33
2015:
Homemakers, Communists, and Refugees: Smuggling Anti-Apartheid Refugees in Rural Lesotho in the 1960s and 1970s Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies 13 (2015): 183-209
2014:
Development, Politics, and the Centralization of State Power in Lesotho, 1960-75 Journal of African History 55:3 (2014): 401-421
