Mhoze Chikowero
[ 01 ]
![]()
[ 02 ]
Mhoze Chikowero is a scholar of African Self-Liberation; an Associate Professor of African History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is the founder and director of the UCSB Africa Center. He is an organic farmer and founder of Uhuru Gardens, an innovative gardening project for principally African students at UCSB. He got his first-class Honors degree in Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe (2001) (grabbing the University Book Prize twice, 2000 and 2001) and his Masters and Ph.D. at Dalhousie University in Canada (2008) as a Killam Scholar. He is a past postdoctoral fellow of the Historical Institute at Rutgers University, American Council of Learned Societies Charles Ryskamp Fellow (2014-17), a past UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Fellow, Hellman Faculty Fellow, and a current Research Fellow at Leiden University, Netherlands. He works with artists and artist-supporting organizations like HiVos and the Prince Claus Foundation (Netherlands). He is also a consultant and writer with the African Liberation Museum in Harare. Chikowero is broadly published in journals and edited volumes. His first book, African Music, Power and Being (2001), won the Kwabena Nketia Book Award (2016). He is currently finishing a few books, including Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe: The Military Entertainment Complex, and Matuzviadonha:African Chiefs, Resistance and the Political Economy of Sustainable Colonialism, both upcoming with MIT Press. He is also working on MaNgwenya: Conversations with Diana Samkange—Musician, Healer, Midwife, and Farmer.