Helen Kimble , nee Rankin (1925 ? 4 December 2019) was an Africanist and campaigner. ^[1]

Life [ edit ]

Helen Rankin was born in Boxmoor , Hertfordshire , the daughter of Thomas Rankin, a Scottish doctor, and Kathleen McClelland. She was educated at Queenswood School . After Girton College, Cambridge , where she graduated in 1945 in economics and literature, she did postgraduate training in adult education at Oxford University , where she was supervised by Thomas Lionel Hodgkin . After a job as an editor at the Bureau of Current Affairs in London, she married the academic David Kimble . He was appointed director of extramural studies at the University College of the Gold Coast , and the couple left for Ghana in 1949. ^[1]

The Kimbles worked together on several projects, particularly publications for African audiences. Helen edited a series of pamphlets on African current affairs, and co-edited the African series for Penguin Group . In 1963 she and David co-founded the Journal of Modern African Studies , co-editing it until 1972. She also taught economics at the University of Dar es Salaam . ^[1]

Divorcing David in 1977, Helen moved to live in Oxford . She worked with the anti-apartheid movement , monitoring the 1994 South African general election , which brought Nelson Mandela to power. She also campaigned in support of the refugees imprisoned at Campsfield House . ^[1]

She died aged 94 on 4 December 2019. ^[2]

Works [ edit ]

• (with David Kimble ) Adult education in a changing Africa : a report on the Inter-African Seminar held in the Gold Coast from December 10 to 23, 1954 . 1955.
• Price control in Tanzania . 1968.
• Effective membership of agricultural co-operatives : report on pilot study in Oxfordshire . 1977.
• Desperately seeking asylum: the view from Oxford . 1998.
• (ed.) Migrant labour and colonial rule in Basutoland, 1890-1930 by Judith M. Kimble. 1999.

References [ edit ]