Overview
Research
Teaching & Supervision
News
Publications
In the media
Simukai Chigudu

Research interests

African politics; modern African history; international development; medical humanitarianism; global health; history and politics of public health

Simukai Chigudu

Associate Professor of African Politics

Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is broadly interested in the politics of global health and epidemics, race and identity, citizenship and activist movements, with a regional focus on Africa and the African diaspora.

Simukai is the author of The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), an examination of the social and political causes and consequences of Zimbabwe’s catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, the most extensive in African history. This monograph won the Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award from the American and International Political Science Associations. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania, and has publications in several leading social science and medical journals.

Simukai is currently writing his first book for the trade, When Will We Be Free? Living in the Shadow of Empire and the Struggle for Decolonisation, which will be published by The Bodley Head and Crown in 2024. This book will combine memoir, political history and cultural criticism to show how colonialism continues to shape politics, society and culture in Africa and in Britain and to explore what it really means to decolonise.

Prior to working in academia, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service. He holds a DPhil in International Development from the Oxford University for which he was awarded the biennial Audrey Richards Prize for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies examined at a UK university.

Simukai teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies and supervises DPhil students.  

Dr Chigudu teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies where he convenes the ‘Core Course in Development Studies’ and offers an advanced option course on ‘The Political Economy of Epidemics in Africa’. And he welcomes inquiries from prospective doctoral students in any of his areas of interest.

  • Conference papers

    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) Rhodes Must Fall and the Politics of Historical Consciousness . Paper presented at Decolonizing the Academy, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 2016
    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) Disease, Disaster and Denial: Cholera as the Site of Political Contestation in Zimbabwe . Paper presented at the Britain Zimbabwe Society Annual Research Day, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 2016
    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) The International Politics of Epidemics in Africa: The Case of Cholera in Zimbabwe . Paper presented at the 6th Annual Researching Africa Day, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 2015
    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) Hountondji Revisited: Cosmopolitan Intellectualism and the Study of Africa . Paper presented at Academic Freedom in Africa: 25 Years after the Kampala Declaration – Issues, Challenges and Prospects, Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Lilongwe, Malawi, 2016
    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) Hountondji Revisited: Cosmopolitan Intellectualism and the Study of Africa . Paper presented at the Social Order in Africa Workshop: Filling Pails, Lighting Fires, Oxford Department of International Development & African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2015
    Chigudu, Simukai
    J Balen ( ) “Globalisation, Governmentality, and Local Leadership in the Gambian Health System . Paper presented at The Global Politics of National Health Systems, University of Sheffield, 2013
    Chigudu, Simukai
    E Hunter, J Kibiki, A Jusabani, E Aris & R Walker ( ) Prevalence, phenotype and treatment gap for epilepsy in rural Tanzania: initial findings of a door-to-door survey . Paper presesnted at the European Congress on Epileptology, Greece, 2010
    Chigudu, Simukai
    E Hunter E & R Walker ( ) An Epidemiological Study of Epilepsy in a Rural District of Northern Tanzania . Paper presented at Research in Progress 2009, Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, London, 2009
    Chigudu, Simukai
    C Ferraro & G Tan ( ) Global Health Education in the Newcastle MBBS Curriculum . Paper presented at Research in Progress 2008, Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, London, 2008
    Chigudu, Simukai
    ( ) Youth Perspectives on HIV/AIDS in South Africa . Paper presented at XVII International Conference on AIDS: Community Dialogue Space, Mexico City, 2008
    Chigudu, Simukai
    H Chigudu ( ) Tackling HIV/AIDS in resource-poor settings . Medsin Global Health Conference, University of Oxford, 2008
Overview
Research
Teaching & Supervision
News
Publications
In the media