Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

Assistant Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mavhunga obtained his MA (History) as a student of Phil Bonner at Wits and his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has just finished co-editing a volume entitled Inside Mobility: A Kaleidoscopic Introduction and writing a monograph The Mobile Workshop: Tsetse Mobilities, African Technologies, and ‘Colonial’ Science in Zimbabwe (both for MIT Press, expected 2013). He is currently working on two books: one, on encounters between guns and indigenous technologies of war in Zimbabwe since c. 1500, the second, The Black Bvekenyas: Four Generations of an African Hunting Family, exploring the lives and times of well-known Afrikaner ivory hunter Cecil Bvekenya Barnard, but told from the perspective of his Shangane wives, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He has published a number of journal articles and book chapters including “Vermin Beings” (Social Text). Clapperton also sits on the editorial board of the “new mobilities” journal, Transfers (published by Berghahn) and is the series co-editor of the new MIT Press book series, Inside Mobility.