Elizabeth MacGonagle

Liz MacGonagle is an African historian in the Departments of History and African & African American Studies. She served as the Director of the Kansas African Studies Center (KASC) from 2013-2021. In her research, she crosses historical, geographical, and theoretical boundaries to link nation, culture, and ethnicity to processes of identity formation in African and Diasporan settings. Her first book, Crafting Identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, examined four centuries of history from 1500–1900 in the Ndau region of southeastern Africa to challenge popular notions about tribalism. She speaks Portuguese and Ndau, as well as some French and Kiswahili. Dr. MacGonagle’s current research analyzes intersections between history and memory at sites of memory central to the heritage of slavery in Africa and its Diaspora. She has received grants from Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Philosophical Society, among others, to support research in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Dr. MacGonagle collaborated with Ken Lohrentz (KU Libraries) to digitize a portion of the Onitsha Market Literature collection held at KU's Spencer Research Library. Selections of this popular Nigerian literature, along with a companion website, are on the Internet.