Munashe Miranda Mataranyika

Munashe is a Master's in International Policy candidate at Stanford, specializing in Governance and Development. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma where she earned a degree in International and Area Studies with a concentration on Africa and a minor in French. She is a Shelby Davis Scholar, a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, as well as a fellow under the Susan R. McCaw Fund at Stanford.

Munashe has interned with HigherLife Foundation, where she served an administrative role centered on managing scholarships awarded to orphaned, vulnerable, and academically gifted students. Having been born and raised in Zimbabwe, Munashe's interests are to explore comparative sociopolitics in developing countries from a post-colonial perspective. She has written on topics that reflect her academic interests such as climate change preparedness in the Southern African Development Community and the efficacy of Western-led counterterrorism in Africa. At Stanford, Munashe hopes to further study the varying dynamics of the impact of development, as both practice and theory, on governance and civil society across the African continent and within the Southern African region in particular.

In her free time, Munashe enjoys singing and songwriting, learning languages, exploring creative art forms, and everything within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.