Mary Mbewe obtained her PhD in History from the Department of Historical Studies at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where she also earned her Master of Arts in History and a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies under the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies (APHMS). She served as the Keeper of History at the Moto Moto Museum in Zambia from 2006 to 2016. Since 2016, she has been teaching history at Mulungushi University in Zambia. Dr. Mbewe has held several international fellowships, including the Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at UWC (2014-2015), the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Doctoral Fellowship (2017-2023), the Sarchi Chair in Visual History Theory Doctoral Research Fellowship (CHR/UWC), and the Action for Restitution to Africa research fellowship (2021-2022). She was an international Visiting Graduate Student at the Jackman Humanities Institute of the University of Toronto in 2019 and was awarded the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research award in 2018. Dr. Mbewe has worked extensively on colonial collections, the history of anthropology, and the missions in Central Africa. For the summer semester of 2025, she is a visiting Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, where she instruct seminars in critical museum and heritage studies, postcolonial studies, and archival methods in research on colonial collections. 

• Museum and Heritage Studies
• Colonial collections
• History of anthropology
  
   

• Mbewe, Mary “From chisungu to the museum: A historical ethnography of the images, objects and anthropological texts of the chisungu female initiation ceremony in the Moto Moto Museum in Zambia, 1931 to 2016” (PhD Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2024). https://uwcscholar.uwc.ac.za/items/ed150f03-e2df-4660-9047-8f8309b47dcf
• Nelson, Abiti and Mbewe, Mary “Handling Collections in the Museum against Cultural Ethics” in Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice (London: University College Press, 2024), chapter 16. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/240134
• Mbewe, Mary, “Problematic Museum Collections in a Post-colonial Context: The case of the Moto Moto Museum Chisungu Collection” The Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, (2022), 61-77.
• Deußen, Carl & Mbewe, Mary (eds.) 2021. “The Gender of Ethnographic Collecting” boasblogs papers 3. Bonn, Bremen, Cologne, Siegen: boasblogs. https://boasblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/bbp3_The-Gender-of-Ethnographic-Collecting_web.pdf
• Mbewe, Mary; Mwaka Siluonde and Victoria Chitungu,  “Resilience and Adaptability: Current Chisungu Practices in Selected Communities in Zambia” in Mulungushi University Multidisciplinary Journal Vol4 No. 2 (2023)
• Mbewe, Mary; Hinfelaar, Marja; and Money, Duncan (2023) "Introduction: The Life and Legacies of Kenneth Kaunda in Southern Africa," Zambia Social Science Journal: Vol. 9: No. 1, Article 2.
  Available at: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/zssj/vol9/iss1/2
• Mbewe Mary,  “Life and Work in Northern Rhodesia: Godfrey Wilson and Xavier Kofie” in Zambia Journal of History Vol 10 No 1 (2023):, 79-101. https://journals.unza.zm/index.php/zj
• Mbewe, M. “First World War battle sites in Mbala/Abercorn and District”
• in Anne Samson, Ana Paula Pires, Dan Gilfoyle (Eds.) There came a time: Essays on the Great War in Africa (London: TSL Publishers, 2023), Chapter 11. ISBN 9781914245428
• Mbewe, Mary, “Amachona: The Making of an Urbanised African Subject in Colonial Zambia” in Quedroago, J. B., Diawara,M., and Macomo, E S.,(eds) Translated Revisited Contesting the Sense of African Social Realisties, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London, 2018.
• Mbewe, Mary,  “A triangulation of relationships: Godfrey Wilson, Zacharia Mawere and their Bemba informants in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia, 1938–1941” (MA thesis submitted to the University of the Western Cape 2015). https://uwcscholar.uwc.ac.za/items/6c0e11d8-691c-4115-9dcd-f4a3eed9caea
• Mbewe, Mary. “From Dublin to Mayibuye: The life and History of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive”, Robben Island Museum, 2017. https://www.robbenisland.org.za/files/publications/African%20Programme/PHED%20APHMS%20Publication.pdf
• Mbewe, Mary. “Museums and Children: Discovering the Discovery Room Concept at Moto Moto Museum” in Coopertion 2013: Newsletter for the Intensive Course in Museology (2014). http://www.minpaku.ac.jp/sites/default/files/research/sc/training/museology/pdf/nl2014.pdf,
• Mbewe, Mary. “Northern Poles” in The Lowdown, July 2013, http://www.lowdownzambia.com/2013/07/01/northern-poles