Staff:Nicole Sithole

IRS Fellow

Nicole Elsie Nonhlanhla Sithole completed her PhD in History at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, in October 2025. Her research examined gender dynamics in African railway communities in colonial Zimbabwe, focusing on labour, domestic life, and social change. She is preparing to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pretoria. Her interests include African labour and urban history, gender and family, infrastructure and everyday life, spatial inequality, and the social histories of colonial institutions. Her postdoctoral work explores how infrastructure, space, and inequality shape urban and peri urban life in southern Africa, while developing her doctoral research into a monograph that situates railway communities within wider imperial and global histories.

Photo: Nicole Sithole