Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

Chakanetsa self-identifies as a critical thinker-doer, who deploys research to the project of building institutions and knowledge cultures for the sustainable futures of Africa. His professional interests lie in the history, theory, and practice of science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the international context, with a focus on Africa. Mavhunga joined MIT as an assistant professor in 2008 after completing his PhD at the University of Michigan and is the founder of Research || Design || Build, a village-based institute in rural Zimbabwe dedicated to interdisciplinary problem-solving and training that builds on what people know and are already doing well. Chakanetsa latest book is entitled The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production (MIT Press, 2018). He is the author of Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe (MIT Press, 2014), which received Honorable Mentions in the Turku Prize (European Society for Environmental History) and Herskovits Prize (African Studies Association) in 2015. His second book is an edited volume entitled What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? which explores STI in Africa from an archaeological, historical, philosophical, anthropological, STS, engineering, development, and policymaking perspective. Some of Mavhunga’s essays appear in Social Text, History and Technology, Transfers, and Journal of Southern African Studies.

Selected Publications

Mavhunga, Chakanetsa. (2018). The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mavhunga, Chakanetsa (ed.). (2019). What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mavhunga, Chakanetsa. (2014). Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mavhunga, Chakanetsa. (2011). “Vermin Beings: On Pestiferous Animals and Human Game”. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Social Text 29 (1), 151–176.

Mavhunga, Chakanetsa. (2012). “Which Mobility for (Which) Africa? Beyond Banal Mobilities”. T2 M Yearbook, 73-84.