Janice Ndegwa

Janice is a PhD candidate in History at Stanford University. She studies the history of science, technology, infrastructure, religion, mobilities, and the environment in East and Central Africa. She is particularly interested in locating contemporary technological developments within an East African longue durée by examining the technological entanglements that shaped the mobilities and environmental changes in the region. Her work aims to challenge problematic narratives about Africans’ capacity for scientific knowledge production and practice. She aims to explore how reframing these narratives has ramifications on 1) how Africans see themselves, their communities, and their futures, and 2) the ways in which African institutions and institutions in Africa create opportunities, construct mechanisms, and make policies concerning technology.

She is passionate about participatory and emancipatory processes of knowledge production, acquisition, and dissemination, especially at the grassroots, and how they translate into personal and social transformation. Using interdisciplinary approaches, she has explored this theme within the fields of education, global health and development, gender and women’s studies, and agriculture and environmental sustainability, through academic and professional experiences in the U.S., U.K. Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, Mauritius, and Israel.