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Georgetown360

Meredith McKittrick

Meredith McKittrick is a historian of Southern Africa who focuses on the intersection of race, colonialism, and the environment. Working primarily on Namibia, the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, her research interests revolve around dryland environments and water resources. Her most recent book, Green Lands for White Men: Desert Dystopias and the Environmental Origins of Apartheid (University of Chicago Press, 2024), won the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History. The book tells the story of a century-old river diversion proposal that promised to flood the Kalahari, transform southern Africa’s climate, and create a society of white farmers. In it, she demonstrates the transnational aspects of this geoengineering scheme that was designed to consolidate white rule.
 
Professor McKittrick is now working on a long history of the Cuvelai River, a seasonal and endorheic river on the Namibian-Angolan border. She’s interested in how water and aridity have been used both to sustain societies physically and to generate regional political imaginaries and social identities among the people who live within this watershed. She lives at the eastern edge of the Appalachians with her spouse; a pit-hound mix named Hazel; and – depending on the season – one, two, or three of her kids. When she’s not working, she can be found in her garden or on the hiking trails near her house.