Dr Netsanet Gebremichael
- Centre of African Studies Visiting Fellow 2025-26
Contact
Location
- Alison Richard Building
- 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP
About
Netsanet Gebremichael earned her PhD in Interdisciplinary Social Studies from Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Uganda in 2019. She currently works as an Assistant Professor and researcher at Addis Ababa University's Institute of Ethiopian Studies. She was a Fatima Mernissi Post-Doctoral Fellow at The Africa Institute in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in 2021-22. From April 2010 to November 2012, she served as the Director of Addis Ababa University's Gender Office, where she initiated several projects, including a Gender Resource Center IT lab and a library for disadvantaged students.
Dr Netsanet is also the Principal of the Ethiopian Women Researchers Network at the Rift Valley Institute. The Ethiopian Women Researchers Network (EWNET) an initiative of the Rift Valley Institute (PRF), funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. EWNET provides a collaborative platform for Ethiopian women researchers in the social sciences and humanities, with a focus on peace and conflict studies. The network aims to strengthen the participation and visibility of Ethiopian women in research, publication, and policy dialogue. It brings together researchers from diverse disciplines, regions, and social backgrounds to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and contribute to more inclusive and evidence-based approaches to peacebuilding in Ethiopia.
Netsanet is the founder of Qibibilosh and Public Lecture Series, a bimonthly interdisciplinary and intergenerational knowledge-sharing platform. Through this platform, Netsanet is currently working actively on curating public history programming of an intergenerational nature that aims to bridge intergenerational and interdisciplinary conversations between and among scholarly and artistic communities, by way of creating conscious space for a public history syllabus in the form of Public Lectures, / Film Screening programs, and Research-based Exhibitions.
Key Publications
- "Mapping the notion of the transnational: A close reading of the ‘Women’s Question’ from the Ethiopian Student Movement’s publications in the 1960s and 1970s" (2023)
- PPPs meet the developmental state: The case of Ethiopia,” chapter in book, Corporate Capture of Development (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) which has been adapted into a podcast and an animation film
- "Oral Memories of the 1977 Famine in Ethiopia" in Transition, Issue 133 (2022)
- "Ambivalent Memories of Imperial legacies: Asmara as ‘Beautiful' and ‘Segregationist' from Ethiopia," published in the Journal of Cultural Studies (2020); and "Travel Writing as an Empirical Mode of Knowing: A Methodological Critique of James Bruce’s Travels and Adventures in Abyssinia," published in MISR Review (2019).
- Https://riftvalley.net/publication/women-in-the-social-sciences-and-humanities-in-ethiopia-the-case-of-addis-ababa-university/
- Review Essay- Abook Review of Mine to Win.pdf
- Co -edited 21st Conference Proceeding of International Ethiopian Studies Conference Netsanet G.jpg
- Quest for Retrospective Reckonings.pdf
Research
Research interests
- East Africa
- Gender
- Twentieth-Century
- Women
- African Studies
- Religion
Dr Gebremichael's academic research focuses on memory, archival studies, historical and cultural documentation practices, particularly through oral history projects. Recently, she completed the first phase of documentation on oral recollections of the 1977 famine in Ethiopia as experienced by women. She also compiled a monograph based on an oral history study of inter-generational perspectives on Emperor Hailessilassie's era.
Her works also include documentation on Women in the Ethiopian Student Movement (1950-78), which she conducted as the recipient of the Global Research Network Grant managed by SOAS University of London (2019-2021). Gebremichael's research outcome led to an archival exhibition titled Kibibilosh, which she curated at the Modern Art Museum, Gebre Kristos Desta Center in Addis Ababa (7 May – 28 July 2021).