Nicole Elsie Nonhlanhla Sithole
I completed a BA in Politics and International Relations in 2015, a BCHSHons in HIstory in 2016 and a masters degree in History in 2020 at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
My PhD project is a gender, social and women’s history of the railways in colonial Zimbabwe between 1945 and 1965. The research challenges androcentric colonial railway archives by unearthing the hidden voices of African women. I do this by rethinking the identities and activities of railwaymen on the Rhodesia Railways as not just shaped by issues of race and class, but also by issues of gender, domesticity and social reproduction. I argue that it is in the fissures of what was intended to be a perfectly disciplined, appropriately gendered and racialised Rhodesia Railways work force that we are able to unearth the hidden voices of African women. In so doing, this project brings new insights to our understanding of the history of the railways in Zimbabwe.
Thesis title: African women and gender on the railways in Zimbabwe, 1945-1965.
Supervisor: Dr Ruth Watson
Research interests: labour history and strike actions in twentieth-century Africa, gender and women’s histories in Africa, twentieth century African urban history, histories of migration and cities in twentieth century southern Africa.
September 2022: Gendered spaces on the Rhodesia Railways, c.1945-1965 at the workshop “New Approaches to Mobility, Transport, and Infrastructure in Africa” at the University of Ghana, Legon.
June 2022:Labour, gender, and multiracialism on the Rhodesia Railways c.1953-1963 at the Gender and Sexuality Workshop, University of Cambridge.
February 2022: Towards a gendered history of the railways in Zimbabwe c.1945-1965 at the Confraternitas Historica Graduate Seminar at Sidney Sussex College.
February 2020: Men, Money, and the Railway Histories of Southern Africa at the Faculty of History First Year Presentation Day, University of Cambridge.
June 2019: Multiple Modernities, Colonial Bulawayo and ‘Modern’ African Women, c. 1920-1950s at the Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) conference
June 2018: Zimbabwe in crisis: A historical analysis of South Africa’s quiet diplomacy, circa 1994-2003 at the Historical Association of South Africa (HASA) conference.
November 2017: Railways, African women’s mobility and the search for a better life in Bulawayo, circa 1920-1940 at the University of Pretoria Postgraduate Humanities Conference.
Contact
Tags & Themes
Sidney Sussex College
CB2 3HU
Cambridge
Blog posts
‘I have always been one of the boys’: Hilda Ramushu and the railways in Zimbabwe, 1970s-1980s. WOMEN'S HISTORY NETWORK. 17 October 2022.
https://womenshistorynetwork.org/i-have-always-been-one-of-the-boys-hilda-ramushu-and-the-railways-in-zimbabwe-1970s-1980s-nicole-sithole/
The Victoria Falls hotel trolley. DOING HISTORY IN PUBLIC. 9 December 2020.
https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2020/12/09/victoria-falls-hotel-trolley-in-colonial-zimbabwe/
Book reviews
'Review of The Night Trains: Moving Mozambican Miners to and from South Africa, 1902-1955, by Charles van Onselen.' Doing History in Public. 9 March 2021.
https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2021/03/09/book-review-charles-van-onselen-the-night-train/