Rose Miyonga

My PhD thesis looks at is about grassroots histories and memories of the Mau Mau in post-colonial Kenya. Focusing on the lived experiences of Mau Mau survivors, I argue that Mau Mau survivors have found ways to remember despite – and sometimes because of – the wider processes of suppression and exclusion within public history-making. These central questions, of what Mau Mau memories look like at the margins and how Mau Mau survivors have preserved and made sense of their pasts in the contexts of wider political forgetting, has lead me to a methodological intervention in the field of Mau Mau studies: one that thinks expansively about the historical record and the types of histories that can emerge from prioritising indigenous, grassroots forms of knowledge in historical. As a result of this, the project offers valuable reflections on the nature of memory-making and its role in individual and collective self-imagining in everyday life.

This approach expands our understanding of how the Mau Mau war was experienced and remembered ‘from below’: in the intimacies of daily life, in the land of central Kenya, in survivors’ bodies, in unofficial archiving practices, as well as in more intergenerational memories passed down through the oral record. By turning attention not just on memories narrated by oral histories, but on the material sites of Mau Mau memories within rural communities, the project also highlights the various ways that Mau Mau survivors have become active curators of their own pasts. Within this, my research recognises the role of emotions in the processes of individual and communal history- and memory-making, emphasising the importance of feelings as an integral part of both the Mau Mau experience, and the process of preserving its record. These questions will allow my project to explore the everyday realities of Mau Mau histories, by bringing together questions of the material and intangible emotional dynamics of records. Connected to this, I am interested in questions of land justice and how this has been a key contingency in the way that histories of the Mau Mau War have been imagined by veterans, by communities, and by the Kenyan nation as a whole.

The study hopes to go beyond the existing historiography by taking Mau Mau veterans' memories themselves as a subject of study, and by looking specifically at the ways that these memories were negotiated in the years before they became of interest to researchers and activists. As such, it will explore what history-making looked like 'from below' in post-independence Kenya. My research centres around oral histories with Mau Mau veterans and their descendants, as well as a critical exploration of the archival fragments of the War in both the UK and Kenya. My methodology is influenced by decolonial theories on participatory research methods, and seeks to view oral histories not as static collection of data, but as dynamic parts of the history-making process themselves.

Research Interests

Kenyan history; legacies of empire and violence; public history; memory studies; history of emotions; post-colonial studies; land justice; archival justice

Education

2021-2025, PhD African History, University of Warwick
2019-2021, MA Race and Resistance, University of Leeds (with Distinction)
2013-2019, BA Spanish and Portuguese, University College London (First Class Honours with Distinction)

Publications

‘Whose History? Mau Mau, Oral Histories and Decolonial Archival Futures in Kenya’, Interventions. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, forthcoming

‘Legacies of the Mau Mau War in the Kenyan Landscape’, The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict, September 2025

'The Bones beneath our Feet', Africa is a Country, July 2025

‘We Kept Them to Remember: Gender, personal archives and the emotional history of the Mau Mau war’, History Workshop Journal, September 2023, https://academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbad010/7259627

‘Colonial Afterlives: Land and the Emotional History of the Mau Mau War’, The Funambulist, 40, March 2022

‘Imagining Kenyan Futures through Kenyan PastsLink opens in a new window’, The Elephant, December 2021

Public Lectures, Conferences, Workshops and Seminars

‘Archiving the Mau Mau war: challenges and opportunities’, Archiving, Memory and Method from the Global South Conference, Makerere University, October 2024 [panel convenor and presenter]

‘Mau Mau’s Open Wounds’, Mau Mau: Transitions and Contours of the Postcolonial State Conference, University of Nairobi, October 2024

‘Mass Graves, Heritage, and Custodianship after the Mau Mau War in Kenya’, African Studies Association UK Conference, August 2024 [panel convenor and presenter]

‘Mass Graves, Heritage, and Custodianship after the Mau Mau War in Kenya’, Cambridge Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group, February 2024

‘Holding the Past in Our Hands: Personal Archives, Family Memories and African Historical Futures’, European Conference on African Studies, June 2023

‘We Can Never Go Back’: Homecoming, Loss and Claim-Making in post-Mau Mau Kenya’, Homecoming after War Conference, May 2023

‘Whose History? Mau Mau, Oral Histories and Decolonial Archival Futures in Kenya’, Warwick Postgraduate Conference, May 2023

‘When there is no archives: decolonial archiving and oral records in Mau Mau history’, Antiracism & Decolonization in Archives & Records Management Open Classroom Series, March 2023

‘Mau Mau as History of Emotions’, University of Nairobi History and Archaeology Departmental Seminar, March 2023

‘Soil Sovereignty: Land and the Making of Mau Mau Histories in Post-Independence Kenya’, Activisms in Africa Conference, January 2023

‘​Show and Tell: Personal archives, oral sources, and the production of history in Kenya’, From Archival Pasts Towards Archival Futures’ Workshop, November 2022

‘Crisis and Contingency: A Family History of the Mau Mau War’, History Lab Conference, July 2022

‘Mau Mau's Afterlives: Memories of War in the Post-Colonial Kenyan Landscape’, Fotomuseum Antwerp, February 2022

‘Gender, Personal Archives and the Emotional History of the Mau Mau War’, Cambridge History of Memory and Emotions Workshop, February 2022

Public Engagement, Broadcasts and Podcasts

I worked as an exhibition and research consultant on and exhibition for the Imperial War Museum, titled Emergency Exist: The Fight for Independence in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus.  

I appeared as a guest on the History Workshop podcast, discussing ‘Archives, Archiving and Decolonisation’ alongside to accompany volume 93 of the History Workshop Journal. I featured on the Book Bunk podcast, A Palace for the People, discussing Mau Mau and memory and history. I recently featured on the Imperial War Museum podcast, Conflict of Interest, discussing the Mau Mau War alongside John Lonsdale, Nikita Gil and Niels Boender.

I have been working with the Belgian photographer Max Pinckers on a long-term public project in collaboration with Mau Mau veterans. The project, which is ongoing, has been presented at the Fotomuseum of Antwerp. We produced an art film entitled Tall Tales, which exhibited at the Hamburg Photography Triennial in May 2022. I also wrote a contribution for Pickers et al.’s book State of Emergency, published in 2024.

Honours and Awards

Midlands4Cities Open Doctoral Award, 2021-2025
University of Leeds Marion Sharples Prize for Best History MA Dissertation, 2021
University of Leeds History Masters Scholarship, 2019
UCL Dean's List, 2018