Oxford Department of International Development

Profile

Jocelyn Alexander's research interests lie in the social and political history of southern Africa, particularly rural politics and land reform, violence and its legacies, and policing, crime and punishment. Her current work focuses on state punishment and its relationship to race, labour and citizenship in Southern Rhodesia.

She has taught at Sussex and Bristol Universities and is a Research Associate at the University of Zimbabwe. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Southern African Studies and Cultural and Social History and the publications committee of the International Africa Institute.

She is co-author with JoAnn McGregor and Terence Ranger of Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland, Oxford: James Currey (2000), and author of The Unsettled Land: The Politics of Land and State-making in Zimbabwe, 1893-2003, Oxford: James Currey (2006).

Her current research focuses on three topics in southern African history. She has a longstanding interest in the history and politics of land, agrarian reform and rural institutions. Her book The Unsettled Land: State-making and the politics of land in Zimbabwe, 1893-2003 (2006) has just appeared. Her second area of ongoing research concerns histories of war and violence, including questions of memory, social and political change, and the politics of veterans. See her co-authored monograph Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland (2000), and subsequent articles. Her third area of research focuses on crime, policing and punishment. She is researching the ways in which different categories of deviants and criminals - from habitual offenders and vagrants to juvenile delinquents and political prisoners - were defined and disciplined in Southern Rhodesia. This work explores the links between the state's concerns with criminality and its control, and official and popular debates over labour, identity, and citizenship. As a research associate at the University of Zimbabwe, Alexander maintains close links with regional scholars as well as others working in NGOs and human rights organisations. Her research has been funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust, among others.