Dr Namhla Matshanda 

Department of Political Studies

Contact details: ntmatshanda@uwc.ac.za

Dr Matshanda teaches International Relations and African Politics in the Department of Political Studies at UWC. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand and a PhD in African Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Her research is interested in postcolonial processes of state formation in Africa. She is especially interested in the contested articulations of statehood in the Horn of Africa. Much of her research has focused on the tensions between state and nation building in Ethiopia. 

Most of Dr Matshanda’s work is grounded in historical and ethnographic research methods. In the area of migration and mobilities she is interested in how intra-African migration is challenging and changing traditional understandings of national identity. Her current research in this area, “Transnational identities and landscapes of belonging among Ethiopian immigrants in Cape Town,” investigates the development of transnational identities, and the meanings associated with these identities, among Ethiopian migrants in Cape Town. In January 2022, Dr Matshanda participated in a workshop titled “Africa in Movement” organised by the Programme on African Social Research, City University of New York. 

Relevant Publications

• Thompson, D.K. & Matshanda, N.T. (2023). Political identity as temporal collapse: Ethiopian federalism and contested Ogaden histories. African Affairs, 122 (486), 119-145. 
• Salemot, M.A. & Matshanda, N.T. (2023). The causes and consequences of the 2018 failed peace agreement between the Oromo Liberation Front and the Ethiopian government. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 1-12.
•  Matshanda, N.T. (2022). The crisis of the postcolonial nation-state and the emergence of alternative forms of statehood in the Horn of Africa. History Compass, 20 (10), 1-10. 
• Matshanda, N.T. (2022) Ethiopia’s civil wars: Postcolonial modernity and the violence of contested national belonging. Nations and Nationalism, 28 (4), 1282-1295. 
• Matshanda, N.T. (2020). Ethiopian reforms and the resolution of uncertainty in the Horn of Africa state system. South African Journal of International Affairs, 27 (1), 25-42. 
• Matshanda, N.T. (2019). Constructing citizens and subjects in eastern Ethiopia: Identity formation during the British Military Administration. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 13 (4), 661-677.
• Matshanda, N.T. (2016). Territorial Control and Cross Border Movement in Eastern Ethiopia: The case of Togochale Border. African Human Mobility Review, 2(2), 468-488. 
• Matshanda, N.T. (2014). Rethinking political crises in the Horn of Africa: Local approaches to the territorial border in Ethiopia’s eastern borderlands. African Renaissance, 11 (1), 25-41.