Kate Ekama

Kate Ekama is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Kate trained as a historian and received a PhD in social and economic history from Leiden University, The Netherlands (2018) with a dissertation on conflict management involving the Dutch East and West India Companies. She has published articles and book chapters on conflict management, wage litigation, and on slavery at the Cape and in Sri Lanka. Kate’s current research addresses the financial underpinnings of nineteenth-century slavery in the British Cape Colony. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, she works on mortgage records to reveal credit networks built on slave collateral; and on the Cape Town agents who facilitated the process of compensation payments to former slave-owners in the colony. Kate’s research contributes to better understanding the transformative period of emancipation in the Cape Colony and its legacies.