Teaching

• History 244: South Africa in the 18th and 19th century
• History 348: South Africa in the 20th century
• Honours: Despots, freedom fighters, and democrats: Political leadership in Southern Africa
• Honours: China in Africa
• History Society co-ordinator
  

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Research interests

Sishuwa works on the political history of southern Africa from mid-twentieth century to the present, focusing primarily on Malawi and Zambia. His research interests include political leadership, biography, elections, civil society, ethnicity, racialised nationalism, and civil-military relations. A common thread that runs through his research is the location of contemporary political developments in a historical context, showing that the roots of recent democratic politics lie in earlier periods.  He is the author of Party Politics and Populism in Zambia (James Currey, 2024) and a recent winner of the prestigious Terence Ranger prize from the Journal of Southern African Studies. Sishuwa is currently working on Gunning for Democracy, a monograph that examines how the military in Malawi and Zambia has helped secure democratic gains since the return to multi-party politics in the early 1990s.

Supervision interests

Southern African political history, broadly defined, particularly topics focusing on Malawi and Zambia.

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Key publications

Party Politics and Populism in Zambia: Michael Sata and Political Change, 1955 – 2014 (James Currey, 2024)

'Multi-ethnic vision or ethnic nationalism? The contested legacies of Anderson Mazoka and Zambia's 2006 election', Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 57.No. 2 (2023), 431-457.

'Defamation of the President, Racial Nationalism, and the Roy Clarke Affair in Zambia', African Affairs, Vol. 122, Issue 486, (2023), pp.33-55. (co-authored with D. Money)

'The outcome of a historical process set in motion in 1991': explaining the failure of incumbency advantage in Zambia's 2021 election', Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 16. No. 4 (2022)., 659-680.

'Autocratisation, electoral politics and the limits of incumbency in African democracies', Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 16. No. 4 (2022), 515-535. (co-authored with N. Beardsworth and H. Siachiwena)

'Legal autocratisation ahead of the 2021 Zambian election', Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 16. No. 4 (2022), 558-575. (co-authored with M. Hinfelaar, L. Rakner and Nicolas van de Walle)

'Roots of Contemporary Political Strategies: Ethno-Populism in Zambia during the Late Colonial Era and Early 2000s', Journal of Southern African Studies, 47 (6), 2021:1061-1081.

'African Studies Keyword: Democracy', African Studies Review, 64 (3), 2021: 704-732. (co-authored with N. Cheeseman)

'Patronage politics and parliamentary elections in Zambia's one-party state, 1983-1988', Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 14. No. 4 (2020): 591-612.

'Surviving on Borrowed Power: Rethinking the Role of Civil Society in Zambia's Third-term Debate', Journal of Southern African Studies, 46 (3), 2020: 471-490.

“'A White Man Will Never Be a Zambian': Racialised Nationalism, the Rule of Law, and Competing Visions of Independent Zambia in the Case of Justice James Skinner, 1964–1969", Journal of Southern African Studies, 45 (3), 2019: 503-523.

Book chapters

'Populism in Africa' in Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis (eds), Elgar Research Handbook on Populism (London: Elgar, 2024).

'Fragile dominance? The rise and fall of urban strategies for political settlement maintenance and change in Zambia' in Tom Goodfellow and David Jackman (eds), Controlling the Capita: Political Dominance in the Urbanising World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

'Charismatic leadership in African politics' in Jose Pedro Zuquete (ed.), Routledge International Handbook of Charisma (London: Routledge), 101-114.

“'Join Me to Get Rid of this President': The Opposition, Civil Society and Zambia's 2011 Election" in Tinenenji Banda, O'Brien Kaaba, Marja Hinfelaar and Muna Ndulo (eds.), Democracy and Electoral Politics in Zambia (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 11-33.​