Cécile Feza Bushidi has a fulfilling career as a dance artist before she earned a PhD in History and went into the academia. In England, she danced with Wayne Macgregor’s Random dance company and presented solo work at Arcola Theatre and Dance Umbrella. In 2017 she completed her PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. There followed an academic career in which Cécile held fellowships or taught at Yale University, the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, as well as at Cambridge. Her last post was as an Assistant Professor of Dance and History at Columbia University, USA. She was finishing a book on dance, culture and politics in colonial Gikuyuland (1880–1963). A historian of East and Central Africa, she published many articles and book chapters on the interrelation between dance and political cultures. One of her research interests was the exclusion and invisibility of dance in official colonial records in Kenya, and how this could be seen as a distinctive and significant 'epistemic injustice’. Her passion about African archives led her to start this network with Dr Zoe Groves. She passed away in New York in 2024. She remains in our thoughts. One of the aim of this network is to produce a book on dance in the history of Africa as she envisaged which will be dedicated to her memory.