Nyasha Agnes Gurira is a Lecturer in the department of Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Midlands State University. She is currently pursuing my PhD with University of Botswana and have a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage Studies and Bachelor of Arts Honor’s Degree in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies both awarded from Midlands State University. Her area of specialty is Documentation of Pre-Colonial Drystone Wall Sites. She is currently teaching, Documentation of Cultural Property, Conservation of Cultural Property and Heritage Legislations and Protection. She is also the department’s field coordinator, she plans, designs and evaluates the departmental field practical’s in both surveying and documentation. She has participated in national restorations and conservation efforts for precolonial sites namely Great Zimbabwe World Heritage Site, Khami World Heritage Site and Naletale national monument and is currently participating in two national researches which involve research on precolonial sites, the first is a Research Council of Zimbabwe and Midlands State University multidisciplinary research titled, A Heritage based Approach to the fight against Covid-19 Insights from Archaeology, Food Science, Chemistry, Public Health and Medicine. The research seeks to understand issues of diet, disease management from pre-colonial societies looking at sites like Ziwa, Great Zimbabwe, Naletale, Danamombe. The second is a documentation project for Naletale cluster sites funded by the American Embassy under their Ambassadors Fund Grant, where we are set to come up with a monuments database for all sites in the cluster. She is published on these precolonial sites namely Great Zimbabwe and Naletale national monuments, in the two publications available online where she discusses issues of sustainable conservation of these sites. Her interest in pre-colonial sites is continually evolving looking at these sites from diverse research perspectives and this has seen her a part of the SMUS project A South-South collaboration that involved cultural heritage and pre-colonial examples of urban development. These sites in Zimbabwe are in fact earliest examples of urban development in the Zimbabwean context. She believes that there is a need to understand the past to pave way for the future. She understands that ruminant precolonial sites/ancient monuments and the first cities are our window into the past where modern day cities can draw valuable lessons from them especially with regards to of sustainable development.
