Obituary: Cécile Feza Bushidi
It is with great sadness that the School of History, Religions and Philosophies has received news of the death, in New York City, of Cécile Feza Bushidi.
Cécile was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and grew up in France, before coming to London to work as a dancer and choreographer. She enrolled at SOAS in 2009 and graduated with a first-class degree in History and African Studies. Cécile then did an MSc in African Studies at the University of Oxford before returning to SOAS to undertake doctoral research on the history of dance among the Gikuyu peoples of central Kenya in the twentieth century.
In 2016, when Cécile was in the final stages of completing her PhD, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge University, during which she began revising her thesis for publication and to teach courses in African history. This was followed by positions at the Centre for Ballet and the Arts at New York University and as a Lecturer in Dance and Art History at Yale University. In 2022, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at Barnard College in New York City.
Beginning with her time at SOAS, Cécile sought in all her scholarly work to make a case for the importance of dance and other forms of visual and performing arts in the social history of Africa. That that project has been cut short by her death is a matter of profound sorrow among those privileged to know and work with her.
Cécile Feza Bushidi, 26 December 1980-12 November 2024
-Dr John Parker
