Naseemah Mohamed is an Assistant Professor at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and a Batten affiliate. Her interdisciplinary research examines the relationships among education, media, technology, global politics, and violence in 20th-century.

Dr. Mohamed’s teaching explores education and conflict from a global perspective, with an emphasis on how systems of schooling are shaped by war, displacement, and political struggle. She teaches courses on education in conflict zones, transnational liberation movements during the Cold War, and Indigenous policymaking in the 21st century. She will also be teaching the foundational Introduction to African Studies course offered by the Woodson Institute and is developing a new course titled AI in Africa: Opportunities, Challenges and Realities, which explores the historical, ethical, and political challenges and opportunities posed by emerging technologies on the continent.

She also leads an advanced qualitative methods course in which students explore their ancestry through archival research, oral history, reflective writing, and, where relevant, genetic ancestry testing. The course encourages students to examine how personal and familial narratives intersect with broader historical processes while learning advanced qualitative methods.

Her current book project investigates how Zimbabwe’s liberation movements used education as a political, ideological, and military tool during the struggle for independence from the Rhodesian regime). Drawing on oral histories and archival sources, the project reveals how these movements envisioned postcolonial governance, citizenship, and the transformative role of education in building a new nation.

Dr. Mohamed earned her DPhil and MSc in Comparative and International Education Policy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a B.A. in Social Studies and African Studies from Harvard University.