Walker Swindell

Walker Swindell is a PhD candidate at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL), working on the Boom to Dust project. Originally from South Africa, he holds a Research Masters degree in History from Utrecht University. His academic work as an historian focuses on the political, economic and social history of southern Africa having written his RMA thesis on the history of Zambian foreign policy during the period of decolonisation. He also completed a 6-month internship at the ASCL where he conducted a literature review in the history of South African based political, social and economic expansion throughout the region as driven by the development of the mining industry. This project has served as the basis of his interest in the history of mining in southern Africa which he now turns to as he researches and writes an environmental history of the mining town of Kabwe, Zambia.