Professor Hadfield has been teaching African history at BYU since 2010 and served as BYU's Africana Studies Program Coordinator from 2017-2024. Hadfield primarily studies South African contemporary social and political history. Her research interests include South African liberation movements and the experience of black nurses in the Eastern Cape. She has also worked on the history of Kilimanjaro mountain crews. Oral history is an important part of her work. She conducted interviews in in both English and the Xhosa language for her book projects: Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (MSU Press, 2016) and A Bold Profession: African Nurses in Rural Apartheid South Africa (UWP, 2021; HSRC Press, 2024). She speaks Swahili and has been involved in the African refugee community in Salt Lake City as well as the local Ngoma Y’Africa Cultural Center. Hadfield earned her PhD in African history at Michigan State University.
