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  • Leeds African Studies Bulletin
  • Leeds African Studies Bulletin No. 83 (2022)
  • Article

In this Issue

Studying Africa

  • Researcher of the Month: Dr Inês Cordeiro Dias
  • Politics of Decolonizing Knowledge and Trajectories of African Studies (LUCAS annual lecture 2022) - Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
  • Researcher of the Month: Alesia Ofori
  • Researcher of the Month: Megan Fourqurean
  • Researcher of the Month: Ruth Bookbinder
  • Researcher of the Month: Lloyd Roberts
  • Researcher of the Month: Jekoniya Chitereka
  • Researcher of the Month - Sreya Datta
  • Researcher of the Month - Ganzi M. Isharaza
  • Religion, Performance and Queer Artists of Colour in South Africa: Interview with Dr Megan Robertson
  • Indigenous Healing and Medicinal Practices in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak in Tanzania: Interview with Dr Simon Mutebi
  • Influence of Affluence and Diversity on Perceptions of Africa: The African Voices Schools Project - Richard Borowski
  • Emerging African Queer Pentecostal Knowledge: Interview with Dr Stephen Kapinde
  • African Knowledges of Climate Change Adaptation: Interview with Dr Michael Chasukwa
  • New Spiritualities of Survival among Refugees in Northern Nigeria: Interview with Dr Matthew Michael
  • African Writers’ Exposition of Oppression, Brutality and Violent Killings: Interview with Dr Evelyn Urama

Analysing Africa

  • Combining Old Values with New: The Breakdown of Political Relationships in Colonial Bunyoro, Uganda - Kerry Pearson

Reading Africa

  • Q&A with Dr Priscilla Ipadeola about Feminist African Philosophy - Dr Abosede Priscilla Ipadeola
  • Review of Susan Williams, White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa - Xavier Moyet

Leeds African Studies Bulletin No. 83 (2022) Monday 13 June 2022

Researcher of the Month: Lloyd Roberts

Photograph of Lloyd Roberts

Corresponding email: hy14lr@leeds.ac.uk

Abstract

“Researcher of the Month” is a new series published in the Leeds African Studies Bulletin. In the format of a Q&A, it features researchers – both academic members of staff, and postgraduate research students – who are members of LUCAS (or otherwise connected to the Centre and its networks) and have an active research interest in Africa. The aim of the series is to profile Africa-centred research at Leeds and beyond, and to provide insight into current work in African Studies.

  • Article keywords:
  • Africa
  • amaZulu
  • British Empire
  • identity
  • masculinity
  • representation
  • South Africa
  • Zulu

Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your ‘research journey’. How did you get to where you are right now?

I’m Lloyd Roberts, and I’ve been at Leeds since 2014 and a PhD student in the School of History since 2018. I had a longstanding interest in South African and Zulu history, and I decided to fulfil this interest and did an undergrad dissertation on the topic. I enjoyed university and living in Leeds so I decided to stay for a Masters, where I wrote another dissertation on Zulu history. Doing a PhD was really an ad hoc decision, and not something I had intended when I started university. However, with the help of my supervisor, Will Jackson- who had also supported me through both dissertations- I managed to secure a White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities doctoral studentship to continue my studies at Leeds.

Who, or what, sparked your interest to work on your particular research area?

My older brother bought my dad the Michael Caine classic, Zulu, when I was about eight or nine. I watched the film with my dad and then didn’t stop watching it for two or three years. I would pester my brother- also a keen history enthusiast- with questions about the Zulu war, the amaZulu people and the British Empire. I’m sure I drove him mad! He fostered this interest by buying me lots of books on the area (perhaps also an attempt to stop me irritating him quite so much with my incessant questioning) and I read a lot. University was the first opportunity for me to properly engage with empire as an historical topic, and over the years cultivated a broader and more complex understanding of the empire’s place in history and the amaZulu people more generally.

What are you currently working on, and why do you think it’s important?

Broadly, my thesis looks at the construction and representation of Zulu masculinity, ethnicity and identity in British imperial writings, with a specific focus on the role of violence, from sources including government documents, newspapers and amateur ethnography. My childhood interest that stemmed from watching the film made me think about the representation of Zulus and Zuluness in modern narratives; namely the synonymy of ‘Zulu’ with a warrior masculinity and South Africa generally to a huge amount of the general public. Plotting the construction of this warrior identity, and how Zulu violence is both described and informs imperial narratives of the amaZulu, helps us to understanding how these ideas are formed and, as they change and are reworked over time, how they have had such a lasting impact. Not only that, it allows us to explore the complex ways that the empire sought to manage its subjects, and how descriptions changed over time, as well as allowing us to see how the amaZulu responded to these narratives as they move from an independent people to colonial subjugation.

How does your research contribute to current debates in African (and African diaspora) studies as an interdisciplinary field?

This research seeks to complicate common stereotypes of Zulu masculinity, seen in contexts such as military tourism, exploitation of African labour, violence associated with the Inkatha Freedom Party and Jacob Zuma’s much publicised rape trial. It therefore contributes to a growing body of scholarship that use specific case studies to challenge assumptions of an ‘African’ masculinity.

  • Article Categories:
  • Studying Africa
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