Dr. Alfred Tembo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Historical and Archaeological Studies. He also served as the Head of Department from March 2022 to March 2026. Since 2022, he has been Co-editor of Historia, the journal published by the Historical Association of South Africa. Dr. Tembo also serves as an Executive Member of the Regional Historical Society of Southern Africa (2022 to date); and the Historical Association of South Africa (2025 to date).
Academic Qualifications
2016: Doctor of Philosophy in History, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein South Africa
2010: Master of Arts in History, University of Zambia, Lusaka
2007: Bachelor of Arts with Education, University of Zambia, Lusaka
Book
War and Society in Colonial Zambia, 1939-1953. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021 (ISBN 978-0-8214-2462-9, and eISBN 978-0-8214-4748-2), pp. 256.
Book chapters
With Jeremy Seekings, ‘The Economic History of Zambia’ in Herman Chitonge, Caleb Fundanga, Vera Songwe and Mundia Kabinga (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Zambian Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, 37-58.
‘The Impact and Legacies of the Second World War in Zambia’, in Ashley Jackson (ed.), National Perspectives on the Global Second World War. London: Routledge, 2023, 116-132.
(c) Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
‘The Second World War Memorial in Zambia: A Contested Tribute’, Journal of African Military History, 7 (2023), 19-40.
‘After the Deluge: Appraising the 1970 Mufulira Mine Disaster in Zambia’, Historia, 64, 2 (November 2019), 109-131.
‘Frustrated Expectations: Experiences of Northern Rhodesian (Zambian) Ex-Servicemen in the Post-Second World War Era’, War in History, 24, 2 (2017), 195-216.
‘Coerced African Labour for Food Production in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) during the Second World War, 1942-1945’, South African Historical Journal, 68, 1 (January 2016), 50-68.
With Ian Phimister, ‘A Zambian Town in Colonial Zimbabwe: the 1964 Wankie Coal Mine Strike’, International Review of Social History, 60, 23 (December 2015), 41-62.
‘The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and Interdisciplinary Research in Colonial Zambia, 1937-1964’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 36, 1 (May 2014), 90-99.
‘Rubber Production in Northern Rhodesia during the Second World War, 1942-6’, African Economic History, 41 (2013), 227-259.
‘African Peasant Reaction to Colonial State Policies in Chipata District, 1895–1939,’ Journal of Humanities, 10 (2011), 39-53.
Blogs
With Kate Law, Andy Cohen, Matthew Graham, ‘Social History from the Global South: New Voices from Southern Africa. Reflections on the British Academy-funded Writing Workshop’, blog for Royal Historical Society (2023).
With Jochen Lingelbach, ‘From war-torn Europe to Colonial Africa’, Africa is a Country, 2021.
Book Reviews
Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Life in an In-between City (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2013), xviii + 174pp, in African Historical Review, 47, 1 (2015), 125-127.
Peter Limb, A Shared History: The ALP, the ANC and the Australian Anti-Apartheid Movement (Barton: Labour International, 2012), 105pp, in African Historical Review, 46, 1 (2014), 96-97.
Working Paper/Conference Proceedings
With Jeremy Seekings, ‘The Economic History of Zambia’, Cape Town: Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa, University of Cape Town, (April 2022), Working Paper No. 28, 1-38.
‘Industrializing a Colonial Backwater: Northern Rhodesia during the Second World War to the 1950s’ in Katshuhiko Kitagawa (ed.) Africa and Asia Entanglements in Past and Present: Bridging History and Development Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan (2016), 99-110.
ORCID NUMBER: 0000-0003-2831-4741
https://orcid.org/orcid-search/search?searchQuery=0000-0003-2831-4741
- African military history
- Militarism
- War history
- Socio-economic history of Zambia
Dr. Alfred Tembo is currently overseeing a £1.5 million UKRI Future Leaders’ Research Grant (with Dr. Sarah Frank of the Department of History, University of Sheffield) titled ‘Rebuilding Lives, Decolonising Nations: Ex-Soldiers, their Families and Communities in Post-Colonial Africa, 1945-60’, this research project is being conducted over a four-year period (2025 to 2029) in the United Kingdom, Zambia, South Africa, and Senegal. The project has employed Dr. Mazimba Mutale-Kaunda as a Post-Doctoral Fellow on fulltime basis.