American University Nairobi Center, Kenya
Wangui Kimari is an anthropologist based at the American University Nairobi Center. Her work draws on many local histories and theoretical approaches – including oral narratives, assemblage theory, urban political ecology, the black radical tradition and various approaches in anthropology – to think through urban spatial management in Nairobi from the vantage point of its most marginalised residents. She is also the participatory action research coordinator for the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), a community-based organisation in Kenya.
Kimari received a PhD in Social Anthropology from York University in Toronto, was a postdoctoral research fellow at the African Centre for Cities, followed by a research fellowship at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town. At American University, Nairobi, she teaches classes on urban youth movements and the politics of climate change in Africa. Kimari researches smart cities and citizenship, and has done urban research in Nairobi, Luanda and Salvador da Bahia. Her work has been published in a number of journals including Antipode, Urban Geography, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Africa, Punishment and Society.
Kimari co-convenes the UTA-DO African Cities Workshop, and annual critical urban studies school that aims to contribute to making African urban scholarship and imagination more inclusive. She is also an Urban Studies Foundation Trustee, a Contributing Editor to the online publication Africa is A Country, and a member of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab.