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Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

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Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is a Zimbabwean professor of science, technology, and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research interests are in the history, theory, and practice of science, technology, innovation in Africa, as well as environmental history and mobility studies.[1][2]

Education

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Mavhunga earned his bachelor's degree in history at the University of Zimbabwe, and a master's degree in History and International Relations at the University of the Witswatersrand in 1996 and 2000 respectively. He worked for three years as a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, before moving to the United States, where he received his PhD in history at the University of Michigan. He is the first graduate of the University of Michigan's Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program.[2]

Career

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Upon completing his doctorate programme in 2008, Mavhunga joined MIT as an assistant professor. He rose to become a full professor at the university in 2020. He teaches courses on technology in history, technology and innovation in Africa, and energy, environment and society in the university's STS Program.[2]

Mavhunga is the author of Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe.[3] The book was a finalist for the Turku Book Prize awarded by the European Society for Environmental History and Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and received honorable mention for the Herskovits Prize (African Studies Association Best Book Prize) in 2015.[4][5] His second monograph, The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production, explores how the presence of the tsetse fly turned the African forest into an open laboratory where African knowledge formed the basis of colonial tsetse control policies.[6] He is also the editor of a volume entitled What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?[7] In November 2023, Mavhunga released his third monograph, Dare to Invent the Future: Knowledge in the Service of and through Problem-Solving, which took its title from one of Thomas Sankara's most inspirational speeches.[8]

His articles have been published in several academic journals including Social Text, Public Culture, History and Technology, Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, Journal of International, Affairs, Thresholds, Transfers, Oryx, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, Historia, and Journal of Southern African Studies.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

Mavhunga has been a visiting professor or research fellow at the University of the Witswatersrand and the University of the Western Cape (as a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Rachel Carson Center, CODESRIA, POIESIS (Gerda Henkel Fellowship Program), and the International Research Institute for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy (IKKM).[16][17][18][19]

Mavhunga has been invited to give keynotes and lectures at various conferences and fora, including at the annual conferences of the Society for the History of Technology, the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility, and at the Futures Conference. In 2017, he gave a talk at the TEDGlobal in Arusha entitled: "Training Critical Thinker-Doers", and at Talks at Google entitled "African Innovation".[20][21][22]

Selected publications

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Mavhunga, C. C. Dare to Invent the Future: Knowledge in the Service of and Through Problem-solving. MIT Press, 2023.[8]

Mavhunga, C. C. Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe. MIT Press, 2014.[3]

Mavhunga, C. C. The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. MIT Press, 2018.[6]

Mavhunga, C. C. (ed.). What do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?. The MIT Press, 2017.[7]

References

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  1. ^ "Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga | MPIWG". www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  2. ^ a b c "Chakanetsa Mavhunga". MIT STS. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  3. ^ a b Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2014-09-19). Transient Workspaces. The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262027243.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-32615-5.
  4. ^ "Turku Book Prize - Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society - LMU Munich". Carson Center.
  5. ^ ESEH (2015-07-13). "Turku Book Award 2015 – European Society for Environmental History". Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  6. ^ a b Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2018-05-25). The Mobile Workshop. The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262535021.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-53502-1.
  7. ^ a b Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2017-06-16). What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-53390-4.
  8. ^ a b Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2023-11-21). Dare to Invent the Future. The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/14744.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-37671-6.
  9. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2011). "Vermin Beings". Social Text. 29 (1): 151–176. doi:10.1215/01642472-1210302. ISSN 0164-2472.
  10. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2015-07-03). "Guerrilla healthcare innovation: creative resilience in Zimbabwe's chimurenga , 1971–1980". History and Technology. 31 (3): 295–323. doi:10.1080/07341512.2015.1129205. ISSN 0734-1512.
  11. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton (2003). "Firearms Diffusion, Exotic and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in the Lowveld Frontier, South Eastern Zimbabwe 1870-1920". Comparative Technology Transfer and Society. 1 (2): 201–231. doi:10.1353/ctt.2003.0019. ISSN 1543-3404.
  12. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (2018). "3 - Modelling an African Research University: Notes towards an Interdisciplinary, Cross-Cultural and Anticipative Curriculum". Journal of Higher Education in Africa. 16 (1–2): 25–50. doi:10.57054/jhea.v16i1-2.1471. ISSN 0851-7762.
  13. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton (2002). "'If they are as thirsty as all that, let them come down to the pool': unearthing 'Wildlife' history and reconstructing 'Heritage' in Gonarezhou National Park, from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s". Historia. 47 (2). ISSN 2309-8392.
  14. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton (2011). "Inertia and Development Approaches to Africa: Towards African Mobilities". Thresholds. 39: 79–82. doi:10.1162/thld_a_00162. ISSN 1091-711X.
  15. ^ Mavhunga, Clapperton (2007). "Even the rider and a horse are a partnership: a response to Vermeulen & Sheil". Oryx. 41 (4): 441–442. doi:10.1017/S003060530704149X. ISSN 1365-3008.
  16. ^ "The First 33 Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 2014-07-15. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  17. ^ "Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga — IKKM Weimar". www.ikkm-weimar.de. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  18. ^ "Selected Visiting Fellows for the 2019 CODESRIA African Academic Diaspora Support to African Universities Programme – CODESRIA". Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  19. ^ "Clapperton Mavhunga named Poesis Fellow". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2010-02-24. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  20. ^ "Manifestos and destinies: Notes from Session 8 of TEDGlobal 2017 | TED Blog". 2017-08-30. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
  21. ^ TED Archive (2018-02-27). Training Critical Thinker-Doers | Clapperton Mavhunga. Retrieved 2024-08-22 – via YouTube.
  22. ^ African Innovation | Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga | Talks at Google (Video). 2017-12-20. Retrieved 2024-08-22 – via YouTube.
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