Ila Axelrod

Ila Axelrod is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development. Ila’s current research interests lie in the social and political history of land reform, gendered relations to land, inter-generation, state-making and rural politics, and oral history methodologies in Mozambique. Ila’s doctoral thesis explores the gendering of social relations to land and access to land across a tumultuous fifty-year period in Mozambique, marked by revolution, war and economic change. Ila follows the interpretations of successive generations of women from the same families, some of whom reside in Mozambique’s rural Gaza Province and others who have migrated to work in Johannesburg, South Africa. This work bridges oral historical and ethnographic insights in both sites. Ila holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford.