Yanathi Mvimbi

New Archival Visions PhD Fellow

Yanathi Mvimbi is a PhD candidate in Historical Studies whose research focuses on people’s history and the university, with particular attention to the People’s History Programme at the University of the Western Cape during the 1980s. Her doctoral work explores the relationship between academic institutions, community-based historical projects, and the development of alternative historical narratives in South Africa.

Yanathi completed an MA examining land, housing, and shack-dweller rights in contemporary South Africa. Her master’s dissertation, “A Land Occupation Called Covid in the time of COVID-19,” contributed to the growing archive of shack-dweller experiences by documenting grassroots responses to housing insecurity and land occupation during the pandemic. Her broader research interests include social history, people’s history, memory, land struggles, and the intersections between communities and knowledge production.