Lena Reim wins Best African Studies Dissertation Prize 2026
Congratulations to Lena Reim on being awarded the Best African Studies PhD Dissertation Prize 2026 by the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) for her dissertation titled Politics and Postmemory in Zimbabwe: Second-Generation Narratives of the Gukurahundi Violence (ODID, 2024).
After careful consideration of the ten submitted nominations, Dr Reim’s work was chosen out of a shortlist of four. The prize committee found Dr Reim’s work to be the strongest in the light of the criteria for the prize, which are scholarly excellence, original contribution, ethical research practice, the engagement with African contexts, and the significance for African Studies at large.
According to the committee, Dr Reim’s dissertation is grounded in excellent scholarship and rigorous, extensive, and ethically sensitive fieldwork in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, concerning politically sensitive issues. It offers a rich account of political storytelling about a foundational period of violent state repression in post-independence Zimbabwe, widely known as Gukurahundi, by second-generation survivors of that violence whose activism has recently broken through decades of state silencing. Its insights and arguments speak well beyond the Zimbabwean context and have substantial relevance to major debates in African Studies and adjacent fields, such as politics, international relations, law, and development studies.
Dr Reim has recently returned to ODID as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. Her Leverhulme-funded project, ‘Resisting Green Extractivism: Transforming Citizenship Struggles in Zimbabwe’, examines violence and political contestation in the context of the global green transition.