IOWC Masters Student
Natasha Shivji
Natasha is an international student from Tanzania currently working on her Masters of Arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and English literature from the University of British Columbia (2008) where she was awarded the UBC President’s entrance scholarship. She has worked as a research assistant in a project on Land rights awareness collecting information from the district of Kilosa in Tanzania (2006). She has also worked with the Zanzibar India Ocean Research Institute (ZIORI), in Zanzibar, as a volunteer assistant (2007). She has currently been awarded a research assistantship in the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University as well as a teaching assistantship with Prof. Ibrahim Hamza in the History department at McGill University. She speaks and writes fluent Kiswahili and speaks intermediate Gujarati.
Natasha’s research is currently comparing the global contact of the East and West African peoples, roughly before 1497, with the imperialist contact beginning in the 16th century. She is focusing on the city-states of Kilwa and Timbuktu to show the transition of the city-states from economic, intellectual and political prosperity to disparity with the invasion of the Portuguese seaborne empire on the coast of East and West Africa.
Natasha's Conference Papers Include
Rethinking the Union, Zanzibar, the Union and Pan Africanism at the Dialogue between Civilizations International Conference on the Indian Ocean-The Largest Cultural Continuum in Zanzibar, August 2008.
Walter Rodney and Pan Africanism presented at the Walter Rodney Conference at the University of dare s Salaam, June 2007.
Towards a New Pan Africanism Anchored in Popular Democracy presented at the Africa mini symposium at the University of British Columbia, December 2006.
