Dr Nicki Kindersley

(she/her)

Publication

• Date
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Research

My research focuses on people living in circumstances of intense poverty and insecurity, mostly in South Sudan and its borderlands. I work on two connected themes: the political thought and intellectual debates of migrant workers and refugees over the last hundred years or so of colonial and postcolonial violence and civil wars, and contemporary militarised political economies and migrant livelihoods. The intellectual lives of displaced tea ladies, brick layers, volunteer teachers and migrant farmhands, and military workers are not hidden but marginalised.

You can read all my research, including policy reports, on my website for free here.

I've just completed a book manuscript about the intellectual history of war-displaced residents in Khartoum's slums and camps during the 1983-2005 Sudanese civil war, rooted in hundreds of interviews, pamphlets, songs and poems collected with people across the region after the war.

Political education in war

I am working on the history of wartime education with Professor Yosa Wawa at the University of Juba, South Sudan. Unlike research in South America and Southeast Asia, there are almost no studies of rebel-run educational projects in Africa. Prof. Wawa and I won AHRC-GCRF funding in 2019 for an exploratory research network in which we're meeting with market-women, ex-child labourers, and ex-militiamen who have sought their own informal schooling, organised classes, and wrote their own textbooks and curricula, in conflict since the 1960s. Their syllabi and curricula were self-made, using various technologies (songs, tape recorders, typewriters and photocopiers), cuttings from international media and human rights reports, and lines and imagery from rebel radio and propaganda, in creative and often subversive ways.

Militarised political economies and armed livelihoods

My second focus is on militarised labour systems and political authority in north-east and central African borderlands and migrant paths, discussing how workers navigate and understand exploitative political economies and armed livelihoods. This research is supported by the Department for International Development via the X-Border Research Network, and by the UK's East Africa Research Fund. This research is run in collaboration with young South Sudanese researchers at the University of Juba and the Rift Valley Institute in South Sudan, examining evolving systems of economic exploitation, military labour and migration controls, which underpin violent militarised governance in the region.

The politics of my work

All of my work is done in direct partnership with academic colleagues, early-career researchers and students in South Sudan, Sudan and across eastern Africa. I have long term collaborations with colleagues at the Universities of Juba and Khartoum, and with local research institutes and activist groups. I use grant funding in supporting the salaries, ideas, publishing, work opportunities and research training of colleagues and students in South Sudan, including the South Sudan National Archives project and public history radio. My aim is to be an administrative and practical help for African and Black intellectuals, and a good colleague.

Teaching

I teach on modern African history, with a focus on the histories and ideas of African and Black scholars and activists, including poetry, newspaper writing, and self-made textbooks. Over 2020-2023 I taught a modern African history module for second year students; I also lead the Year 1 Global Histories module, and co-teach the Year 2 Anti-Colonial Resistance module.

I currently supervise Masters and PhD research on Black Welsh histories, on histories of gendered violence in West Africa, and on public histories of anti-colonial figures in India. 

I am keen to work with postgraduate researchers working on African, pan-African and Afro-Asian anti-colonial movements, imperial and colonial history, post-colonial African history and politics, and histories of civil wars.

Biography

Previously Harry F Guggenheim Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, 2017-2020. PhD from Durham University in 2016.

With the Rift Valley Institute in South Sudan, I help to run oral and archival research methods courses for students, and have worked with the South Sudan National Archives team since 2012. For more on my career, see here.

Supervisions

Current supervision

Serena Rattu

Graduate Tutor

Michael Jonas

Research student