In 2014, the Gerda Henkel Foundation initiated a scholarship programme supporting young humanities scholars from Africa and Southeast Asia in honour of the foundation's founder, Lisa Maskell. It is the largest international support programme for PhD students in the history of the Foundation. The Lisa Maskell Fellowships aim to strengthen universities in the partner countries, to counter the outflow of qualified young scholars and to ensure the doctoral students enjoy excellent academic training.
In the last couple of months, L.I.S.A. has been publishing interviews with the Lisa Maskell Fellows from Subsaharan Africa and from Southeast Asia, in which they talk about their research projects as well as their experiences during their academic career and the Lisa Maskell fellowship.
This week, we welcome Dr. Sibongile Mpofu from Zimbabwe. After graduating from the University of Westminster, she started her PhD in Journalism with the thesis Women, politics and the media: Online media (re)engaging female participation in Zimbabwean politics at Stellenbosch University in 2015, which she successfully completed in December 2017.