​Stellenbosch University Museum, in partnership with Michigan State University, cordially invites you to participate in a conversation with Prof Jamie Monson, Director of the African Studies Centre and Professor of History at Michigan State University.

Topic:    China-Africa historical relations

Date:     20 February 2019

Time:     18:00

Venue:  University Museum, 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch

Prof Jamie Monson became interested in Africa when she served as an agriculture volunteer for the Peace Corps in rural Kenya in 1980. She then completed her PhD in African History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and took her first teaching position at Carleton College in 1991. In 2015, she accepted a position as Professor of African History in the Department of History and Director of African Studies at Michigan State University. Monson's early research focus was on the agricultural and environmental history of southern Tanzania. She also worked on anti-colonial warfare in what was then German East Africa. In the late 1990s, she began a new research project on the history of the TAZARA railway, built with Chinese development aid in Tanzania and Zambia in the 1960s and 1970s. Her book, Africa's freedom railway, was published by Indiana University Press in 2011.

Most recently, Monson has been studying the history of China-Africa relations (and learning Chinese) and frequently undertakes research in China. Her new project is a study of technology transfer in the history of Chinese development assistance to Africa. A second project that she is engaged in uses records of visits made by African women's delegations to China during the Cultural Revolution to examine gendered aspects of civil diplomacy.

Ubuntu Dialogues is a three-year Mellon Foundation-funded collaborative project between Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Michigan State University in the United States.

RSVP: Natasha Coltman at 021 808 3691 or ncoltman@sun.ac.za

Light refreshments will be served after the dialogue.