Original Date: September 1, 2026
African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development, Published by Springer (2025)
This project draws on African feminisms to propose major questions about the agency of girls. The central research questions of the book are: what is the history of girlhood on the ground in various regions of Africa? In African contexts, how are humanistic approaches helping social scientists and development practitioners to unravel some of the seemingly unsolvable challenges? And, finally, in what ways might development projects defined and shaped by adolescent African girls lead us to better understandings of challenges they face and beneficial as well as realistic solutions and critical responses to poverty, development, and inequality? The authors expand the existing conversation by drawing upon epistemological foundations emerging from groundbreaking work in the history of gender in Africa. The data and analyses presented in this work contribute to the fields of African politics, girlhood studies, African feminisms, African histories, and development studies.
About Relebohile Moletsane
Relebohile Moletsane is Professor and FALF-Wits-NRF Research Chair in Gender-based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Using participatory visual methodology, Moletsane’s research interests include gender justice, sexual and reproductive health, girlhood studies, and rural education and development. Recent publications include several co-edited books, such as the 2024 book Where am I in the Picture? Researcher Positionality in Rural Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (with Claudia Mitchell and Katarina Giritlin), African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development (2025). Palgrave MacMillan (with Cymone Fourshey & Marla Jaksch), and Ethical Practice in Participatory Visual Research with Girls and Young Women inRural Communities (2021). New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, with Lisa Wiebeisek, Astrid Treffry-Goately and April Mandrona.
About C. Cymone Fourshey
C. Cymone Fourshey is a historian and Professor of History and International Relations at Bucknell University where she is an affiliated faculty in Critical Black Studies and serves as the the Carmen Gillespie Directors of the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures. Her areas of expertise include Eastern Africa’s early History (first millennium BCE – mid-second millennium CE). She is particularly interested in how economy and gender have shifted and been constructed and how this knowledge can be used to broaden our understanding of the myriad diversity and complexity of the human experience across space and time.
About Marla L. Jaksch
Marla L. Jaksch is transdisciplinary artist, activist, educator and Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). Her work explores the gendered and racialized struggle for freedom and justice in East Africa and southern Africa, as well as the status of girls and women in post-independence Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa — research she expanded as a Fulbright Scholar to Tanzania at the University of Dar es Salaam. She has published work in the areas of girlhood studies; feminist bioethics; asylum, migration, and immigration; curation, archiving, and critical digital humanities. In addition, she provides expert legal testimony on LGBT+ and gender-based violence related asylum and refugee cases to the United States from applicants in East Africa and southern Africa.