Heike Schmidt

Heike Schmidt is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading's Department of History, specializing in modern African history with a focus on Southern and East Africa, particularly Zimbabwe and Tanzania. She directs dissertation programs and integrates decolonial perspectives into her research and teaching. Her work examines race, white privilege, gender violence, nationalism, and colonial legacies through extensive fieldwork and oral histories.

Research interests include colonialism's impact on gender roles, memory studies, and comparative colonialisms. She has published extensively, including the influential book Colonialism and Violence in Zimbabwe: A History of Suffering (2013). Her recent work addresses her own positionality as a white European historian, critically engaging with race and colonial historiography.

Teaching spans undergraduate courses on African colonialism, nationalism, gender, and the Rwanda genocide, as well as postgraduate modules on violence in Africa and postcolonial theory. She advises PhD students on modern African history and supervises research on topics ranging from Zimbabwe's liberation history to U.S.-Guatemalan relations.

Awarded Fellowships from the Royal Historical Society and Higher Education Academy, she engages in public scholarship through media interviews (Al Jazeera, BBC) and blogs. Key research areas include the Maji Maji War, colonial sexuality scandals, and healing processes post-conflict.