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: Friend, Partner, or Neocolonial Power
- Honours: Writing the Dissertation
- Honours: The Public Role of the Historian
- History Society co-ordinator
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. 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.
Education
DPhil. in African History, University of Oxford
MSc. in African Studies, University of Oxford
B.A. in African History, University of Zambia
Key publications
Monograph
Party Politics and Populism in Zambia: Michael Sata and Political Change, 1955 – 2014 (James Currey, 2024)
Journal articles
'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.