Jamie Monson is a scholar of Africa and China, currently Professor of History and Director of the African Studies Centre at Michigan State University. Formerly, she was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a SSRC Humanities fellow at Peking University. Her research ranges from women’s roles in Africa-China civil diplomacy in the 1960s-70s, technology transfers in China-African exchange, to colonial and anticolonial, agricultural and environmental histories of East Africa. Monson has conducted pioneering research on China-Africa engagement during the Cold War era, especially the TAZARA Railway, a technology assistance project built in Tanzania and Zambia during the 1970s.   

Monson's interest in Africa emerged when she served as an agriculture volunteer for the Peace Corps in rural Kenya in 1980. She received her PhD in African History at UCLA, and taught at Carleton College before moving to Michigan. She has written Africa’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania (Indiana University Press, 2009) and co-edited volume Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Brill, 2010).