Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire

Dr. Simukai Chigudu (b. 1986, Zimbabwe) is a Zimbabwean-born writer, scholar and former medical doctor whose work explores the legacies of colonialism, the politics of freedom and the stories we inherit from the past. His debut work of literary nonfiction, Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire (2026), weaves family memoir with the turbulent history of Zimbabwe and the wider struggles against empire. He is Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford and was previously a fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His first book, The Political Life of an Epidemic (2020), won the prestigious Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award. A founding member of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, Chigudu has written widely about race, history and the cultural politics of empire.