Louisa Cantwell

Academic Year: 
2014-15
Direction: 
To Yale
Exchange Partners: 
Cambridge University
Research Interest: 
Ethnicity, Nationalism And Chiefship In the Kgatleng, 1870-2013

Louisa Cantwell is a PhD candidate in African History based at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. Her research centers on the Bakgatla chieftaincy that straddles the Botswana-South Africa border, and traces the resilience of traditional authority structures as significant for grassroots governance and as a basis for community identity. Before starting her doctoral research under the supervision of Dr Emma Hunter in 2011, Louisa undertook an MPhil in Development Studies. She holds an undergraduate degree in History from St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.

Policy Brief: “Building Legitimacy at the Local Level: Governance and Development In Botswana.”