Heidi Gengenbach
Biography
Heidi Gengenbach joined the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2013 after over a decade of research, teaching, and consulting in the field of African agricultural, livelihood, and gender history. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in African History at SUNY Buffalo, Harvard, Brown, and the University of Minnesota; she also taught Africa-themed seminars in the writing program at Boston University for two years.
Area of Expertise
The social and environmental history of Africa, especially southern and eastern Africa; gender, food, and agrarian livelihoods; colonial and post-colonial nutrition science; histories of humanitarian intervention; and oral history
Degrees
MA (Humanitarian Assistance), Tufts University, 2013
PhD (History), University of Minnesota, 1999
BA (History), University of Toronto, 1986
Professional Publications & Contributions
- Recipes for Disaster: Gender, Hunger, and the Remaking of an Agrarian Food World in Central Mozambique, 1500-2000 (in progress, under contract with Ohio University Press).
- “'Provisions’ and Power on an Imperial Frontier: A Gendered History of Hunger in 16th c. Central Mozambique,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 50 (2017): 409-437.
- With Thomas Bassett, William Moseley, William Munro and Rachel Schurman, "Limits of the Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A): Reconceptualizing gendered agricultural value chains." The Geographical Journal (2017).
- “Living Ethnicity: Gender, Livelihood, and Ethnic Identity in Mozambique” in Women, Gender and Ethnicity in Africa, ed. Jan Bender Shetler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015).
- Binding Memories: Women as Tellers and Makers of History in Magude, Mozambique. Gutenberg-e Electronic Book (joint publication of the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press, 2005).
- “Tattooed Secrets: Women’s History in Magude District, Southern Mozambique,” reprinted in Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, eds. Antoinette Burton and Tony Ballantyne (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).
- “Boundaries of Beauty: Tattooed Secrets of Women’s History in Southern Mozambique,” Journal of Women’s History 14, 4 (2003): 106-41.
- “‘What My Heart Wanted’: Gendered Stories of Early Colonial Encounters in Southern Mozambique,” in Women and African Colonial History, eds. Susan Geiger, Jean Allman and Nakanyike Musisi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
- “Naming the Past in a ‘Scattered’ Land: Memory and the Powers of Women’s Naming Practices in Southern Mozambique,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, 3 (2000): 523-42.
- “’I’ll Bury You in the Border!’: Women’s Land Struggles in Post-War Facazisse (Magude District), Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, 1 (1998): 7-36.
- Women, Land and Resettlement in Magude District: A Field Study. Maputo: Norwegian Refugee Council, 1997, 162 pp.
- “Truth-Telling and the Politics of Women’s Life History Research in Africa: A Reply to Kirk Hoppe,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27, 3 (1994): 619-27.
Additional Information
Associate Professor Gengenbach's doctoral dissertation, an interdisciplinary study of rural women’s oral and artefactual forms of history-telling in post-civil war Mozambique, received the Gutenberg-e Electronic Book Prize from the American Historical Association, and was published as an e-book by Columbia University Press in 2005. Her consulting work arises from a commitment to approaching African history both as an academic endeavor and as an important source of applied knowledge for Africa’s present development challenges and policy concerns. Most recently, she served as academic partner for a Gates Foundation-funded project with the Global Fund for Women, supporting the agricultural and food security programming of grassroots women’s groups in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Uganda. In other chapters of her career, she has worked for local nonprofits focused on organic farming, hunger relief, youth mentoring, and legal advocacy for abused and neglected children.
She is currently working on two projects. For one, a collaborative interdisciplinary project funded by a 5-year grant from the National Science Foundation, she will investigate the nutritional consequences of women farmers’ participation in an ongoing donor-funded program to commercialize cassava production in Inhambane Province, southern Mozambique. The second is a historical book project tentatively titled Recipes for Disaster: Gender, Hunger, and the Unmaking of an Agrarian Food World in Central Mozambique, 1500-2000.