Laura Fair is Professor of History at Michigan State University in the U.S.A. She lived in Zanzibar for many years doing research for her first book: Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community and Identity in Post-abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945. In this book she illustrates how former slaves used the social and cultural tools at their command to demonstrate their freedom from slavery and articulate alternative visions of justice under colonialism. Her current book project is a wide-ranging study of commercial cinema in colonial and post-colonial Tanzania, exploring changes in exhibition, distribution and reception over time.