In 1993 I went to Africa for the first time and my life has never been the same since. At that time I was an undergraduate at the University of Victoria. I was also a reproductive rights activist in the community and as such I was on the board of a local non-governmental AIDS organization. It was in that capacity that I was offered the opportunity to go to an international conference on youth and AIDS in Windhoek, Namibia, and while there I decided that I wanted to focus my graduate studies on the history and politics of fertility control in Southern Africa. Consequently, I went to Queen's University to do my Master's and Doctorate on the history of eugenics and the birth control movement in South Africa from 1910-1939.

I graduated from Queen's with my PhD in 1999 and began working at Carleton teaching African history in 2003. I teach a number of courses related to Africa such as a first-year course on the construction of the Atlantic World, a second-year African History survey course, and a fourth-year seminar on modern South Africa. Ever since that conference in Namibia I have also retained a deep concern over the way that AIDS is ravaging African societies, hence my idea in 2004 to start an AIDS club with students with a similar interest.

In 2005 my book called Race, Maternity, and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa, 1910-39 was published by Palgrave Macmillan in the UK. That book is based on my doctoral dissertation. I'm now busy developing a new research project that will examine the impact of South Africa's Family Planning Program on women's lives during apartheid, specifically in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time the national government actively encouraged white population growth while some black women were forcibly discouraged to curtail their fertility. Yet paradoxically the government, committed to a conservative moral agenda, refused to allow women access to abortion services. As a result women were forced to control their fertility under difficult and often dangerous conditions. While abortion is now legal in South Africa, during the apartheid era many affluent white women travelled to Britain to obtain the medical procedure. Other less fortunate women, mainly black, were forced to turn to an underground network to obtain illegal, and often botched, abortions within their own country. Over the next few years I want to learn about women's experiences in obtaining abortions and other kinds of fertility control under apartheid.

I look forward to continuing to support the Carleton AIDS Awareness Society, a club made up of an amazing, dedicated and energetic group of impressive students.