Zoe Cormack

Zoe Cormack is a Research Fellow at The Open University's Department of History in the United Kingdom and a research assistant at The British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Her research focuses on:

• Heritage Studies and Critical Heritage
• African History, particularly South Sudan and Kenya
• Cultural Rights and constitutional frameworks
• Material culture in museum collections
• Landscape history and memory studies
• Post-colonial heritage issues

Dr. Cormack's work examines how heritage functions as both a tool of oppression and a means of empowerment in African contexts. She investigates the relationship between cultural heritage and political power structures, with particular attention to Kenya's constitutional framework and pastoralist communities' land rights. Her research on South Sudanese material culture in European museums contributes to decolonization debates in museum studies.

She completed her PhD, 'The Making and Remaking of Gogrial: Landscape, history and memory in South Sudan' at Durham University in 2014, which established her expertise in how historical narratives intersect with physical landscapes and collective memory in post-conflict societies.