Esther Wadzanai Mano

Esther Wadzanai Mano is a Zimbabwean MPhil candidate in African Studies whose research focuses on the relationship between education and liberation in colonial Zimbabwe. Before attending Cambridge, she was a Watson Fellow, where she conceived and carried out an original international research project exploring community efforts to decolonise African education in nine African countries. She is an expert on educational access, with multiple levels of experience in college counselling with vulnerable youth.

During Esther’s undergraduate studies at Earlham College, she was a dual-collegiate athlete in football and track & field, captaining both teams. She was co-president of the Black Student’s Union and Founder of the college’s Black, African & African American Residential Floor, a pan-African initiative for building a safe community for Black students in a pridominately, white instituation. At Cambridge Esther is the Centre of African Studies student representative as well as an active member of Cambridge’s Palestinian Solidarity Society. Esther is one of five sisters, and dreams of an equitable and just world (where Arsenal tops of the Premiere League).