Trustee tenure: 2023-
Mathare Social Justice Centre
Mathare Valley, Nairobi
Kenya
kuikimari@gmail.com | Profile at HUMA
Dr Wangui Kimari is an urban anthropologist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Wangui is a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town, and participatory action research coordinator for the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), a community-based organization in Mathare, Kenya.
Her work draws on many local histories and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches – including oral narratives, assemblage theory, urban political ecology and the black radical tradition – in order to think through urban spatial management in Nairobi from the vantage point of its most marginalized residents. Wangui is also an editorial board member of the online publication Africa Is a Country (AIAC), and a co-organiser of the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, an annual critical urban studies summer school in Nairobi that encourages young scholars, predominantly from the region, to theorise and valorise the various praxes that emerge through and with dynamic African spaces.