Television interviews – Al Jazeera ‘Inside Story’, France 24, ITV ‘Good Morning Britain’, ORF (Austria), 3SAT (Germany), Sky News, TRT World.
Radio interviews – LBC.
The Conversation articlesHeike Schmidt
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+44 (0) 118 378 6543
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Associate Professor
Director of Dissertations
Areas of interest
My passion for Africa began during a study abroad year at the University of Zimbabwe. I have since become a historian of modern Africa, with my area of specialty being the history of Southern as well as East Africa, in particular Zimbabwe and Tanzania in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I have always had a decolonising approach to my research, teaching, and to my citizenship at my workplace. Currently, I am shifting my research agenda - not least taking accountability for my own positionality as a white European historian of African lives - to race and white privilege. My research and my publications are rooted in extensive fieldwork which includes undertaking oral history interviews as well as archival studies in Africa.
- gender
- violence & conflict
- race & white privilege
- nation & nationalism
- compared colonialisms
- religion
- memory
Postgraduate supervision
Current supervision
- Richard Balzano - Oil, Aid, and Human Rights: U.S.-Guatemalan Relations and the Political Economy of National Interest, 1979-1983
- Noel Mutasa - Decrypting the single narrative of Zimbabwe’s liberation history: An erudite revisit of Ndabaningi Sithole, the Nhari Rebellion, Mgagao Declaration and the Vashandi Group, 1974 to 1979
- Shepherd Mutswiri - A Negotiated settlement: Faith, Nationalism, and Women’s Political Imagination in the Decolonisation of Zimbabwe, 1960 to 1980
Previous supervision
- Bethany Rebisz (AHRC SWW DTP funded)- Losing the Hearts and Minds: The Role of Aid in Counter-Insurgency Warfare in Kenya, 1952-1960
Postgraduate research teaching/skills
I welcome PhD students in Modern African History. I encourage especially those intending to research Southern or East Africa who are interested in gender or conflict.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Foundation Year – Contribution to Presenting and Representing
Part One Option - The Rwanda Genocide of 1994
Part Two Option - The Colonial Experience, Africa 1879 to 1980
Part Three Topic - Africa from European Settlement to Nelson Mandela (South Africa and Zimbabwe)
Part Three Subject - Gender in Africa
Part Three Dissertation Supervision
Postgraduate MA (postgraduate taught)
Option: Violence and Conflict in Twentieth Century Africa
Theory and Themes: Postcolonial History
Independent Study Supervision
Dissertation Supervision
Research centres and groups
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Websites/blogs
Selected publications
Impact and public engagement
Publications
- Schmidt, H. (2015) Shaming men, performing power: female authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the eve of colonial rule. In: Shetler, J. and Hodgson, D. , (eds.) Gendering Ethnicity in African History: Women's Subversive Performance of Ethnicity. Women in Africa and the Diaspora University of Wisconsin Press , Madison WI. pp. 265-289. ISBN: 9780299303945
- Schmidt, H. (2014) Who is master in the colony? Propriety, honor, and manliness in German East Africa. In: Eley, G. and Naranch, B. , (eds.) German Colonialism in a Global Age. Politics, History, and Culture Duke University Press , Durham. pp. 109-128. ISBN: 9780822357117
- Schmidt, H. (2013) Keine romantische liebe in Africa? Mission, Manner, Monogamie. L'Homme: European Journal of Feminist History , 24 (1). pp. 93-102. ISSN: 1016-362x
- Schmidt, H. (2013) Colonialism and violence in Zimbabwe: a history of suffering. James Currey and Weaver , Oxford and Harare. pp 303. ISBN: 9781847010513
- Schmidt, H. (2010) Zimbabwe, Great. In: McNeill, W. , (eds.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume V. 2nd Edition. Berkshire Publishing Group , Great Barrington. pp. 2114-2117. ISBN: 9781933782652
- Schmidt, H. (2010) Kongo. In: McNeill, W. , (eds.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume III. 2nd Edition. Berkshire Publishing Group , Great Barrington. pp. 1087-1090. ISBN: 9781933782652
- Schmidt, H. (2010) Deadly silence predominates in the district: the Maji Maji War and its aftermath in Ungoni. In: Giblin, J. and Monson, J. , (eds.) Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War. African Social Studies Brill , Leiden. pp. 183-219. ISBN: 9789004183421
- Schmidt, H. (2010) (Re)Negotiating Marginality: The Maji Maji War and Its Aftermath in Southwestern Tanzania, ca. 1905–1916. International Journal of African Historical Studies , 43 (1). pp. 27-62. ISSN: 0361-7882
- Schmidt, H. (2008) Silence and absence: violence and the dislocation of memory in Zimbabwe. Oral History - A dialogue with our Times: Proceedings of the 15th International Oral History Conference. International Oral History Association , Guadalajara, Mexico. pp. 15.
- Schmidt, H. (2008) Colonial intimacy: the Rechenberg scandal, homosexuality and sexual crime in German East Africa. Journal of the History of Sexuality , 17 (1). pp. 25-59. ISSN: 1535-3605
- Schmidt, H. (2007) The future of Africa's past: observations on the discipline.. History in Africa , 34 pp. 453-460. ISSN: 0361-5413 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hia.2007.0018
- Schmidt, H. (2004) Zimbabwe, Great. In: McNeill, W. , (eds.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume V. Berkshire Publishing Group , Great Barrington. pp. 2114-2117. ISBN: 974309109
- Schmidt, H. (2004) Kongo. In: McNeill, W. , (eds.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume III. Berkshire Publishing Group , Great Barrington. pp. 1087-1090. ISBN: 974309109
- Schmidt, H. (2002) Introduction: Cherished Visions and Entangled Meanings. In: Deutsch, J. and Probst, P. , (eds.) African Modernities: Entangled Meanings in Current Debate. James Currey pp. 1-17.
- Schmidt, H. (2002) Entangled memories: Bindung and identity. In: Elkana, Y. , Krastev, I. , Macamo, E. , Randera, S. , (eds.) Unraveling ties: from social cohesion to new practices of connectedness. Campus , Frankfurt. pp. 199-212. ISBN: 9783593368467
- Deutsch,, J. , Probst, P. , Schmidt, H. , eds. (2002) African modernities: entangled meanings in current debate. James Currey , Oxford. pp. 192. ISBN: 852557922
- Schmidt, H. (2000) Gender and power: changing political institutions in precolonial Africa. pp. 13.
- Schmidt, H. (2000) Wissensproduktion und die Frage nach dem Ort der Weltgeschichte und Weltsgeschickte: Kommentare zu Steve Feierman. In: Harneit-Sievers, A. , (eds.) Afrikanische Geschichte. Klaus Schwarz Verlag , Berlin. pp. 25-35. ISBN: 9783879975822
- Schmidt, H. , eds. (1999) Neither war nor peace: making sense of violence. In: Elwert, G. , Feuchtwang, S. , Neubert, D. , (eds.) Sociologus , 1 pp. 211-225. ISSN: 0038-0377
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Roads or other notable features do not exist: the Anglo Portuguese boundary commissions of 1898 and 1905/06. pp. 15.
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Afrikanische Moderne(n). Humboldt-Spektrum , 5 (4). pp. 62-64. ISSN: 0946-641x
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Heilungsprozebe: Korperlichkeit und Machtverhaltnisse Einleitung. In: Schmidt, H. and Wirz, A. , (eds.) Afrika und das Andere: Alteritaet und Innovation. , 17. Lit , Hamburg. pp. 43-44. ISBN: 382583395x
- Schmidt, H. and Wirz, A. , eds. (1998) Afrika und das Andere: Alteritaet und Innovation. Schriften der VAD Lit. (17). , Hamburg. pp 408. ISBN: 382583395X
- Schmidt, H. (1997) Geschlechterverhältnisse. Gegenstand und Methode. In: Deutsch, J. and Wirz, A. , (eds.) Geschichte in Afrika: Einfuhrung in Probleme und Debatten. Studien (Zentrum Moderner Orient) Arabische Buch (7). , Berlin. pp. 175-200. ISBN: 3860931679
- Schmidt, H. (1997) Healing the wounds of war: memories of violence and the making of history in Zimbabwe's most recent past.. Journal of South African Studies , 23 (2). pp. 301-310. ISSN: 1465-3893 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057079708708538
- Schmidt, H. (1996) Love and healing in forced communities: borderlands in Zimbabwe's war of liberation. In: Nugent, P. and Asiwaju, A. , (eds.) African boundaries: barriers, conduits and opportunities. Frances Pinter , London. pp. 183-204. ISBN: 185567372X
- Schmidt, H. (1995) 'Penetrating' foreign lands: contestations over African landscape. A case study from Eastern Zimbabwe. Environment and History , 1 (3). pp. 351-376. ISSN: 1752-7023