A passion for music, environmental justice and the human experience takes U of T grad to Cambridge

Growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, Lita Wanjiru Ngure learned early on how music could reflect social and environmental realities. 

A violinist since the age of five, and a member of the Youth Theatre of Kenya, she performed in musicals across the country focused on themes of climate, community and social change. 

“I learned so much about the environment and community through songs,” Ngure says. “Composing music around these themes, I realized how powerful music can be in making these histories stay with people.”

Those experiences led Ngure to pursue a double major in environmental studies and peace, conflict & justice, with a minor in environmental geography at the University of Toronto, where she will graduate this month. Her work now focuses on how extractive industries and politics reshape landscapes, communities and everyday life.

“I wanted to pursue a path that humanized environmental studies,” Ngure says. “I became interested not only in how industries transform environments, but also how communities record and make sense of those changes through culture and memory.”

A 2025-26 Undergraduate Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, Ngure studied South African apartheid-era music as a record of how mining reshaped communities and family life. Before and during apartheid, the mining sector relied on racial segregation and migrant labour, relocating Black workers into under-resourced compounds, while wealth and infrastructure remained concentrated elsewhere – a system that contributed to lasting economic inequality and community displacement.

Ngure examines songs about migration, separation and hardship as community histories often absent from official archives. This includes Zahara’s “Loliwe,” about the migrant labour system and stories of Black South African men travelling to Johannesburg for minework.

She also highlights exiled anti-apartheid musicians such as Hugh Masekela, known as the “godfather of South African jazz,” whose music documented migrant labour and displacement on Black South African communities.

“When we think about how to understand communities, musicians who have lived through this history offer a profound account of lived realities,” Ngure says.

“Some of this music is by the children of mining workers, who describe not seeing their fathers again, or the physical separation between their homes and families but were ultimately seen as critiquing the government.” 

Later this summer, Ngure will continue her research at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa before heading to the University of Cambridge for a master of philosophy in Anthropocene Studies.

She credits Kariuki Kirigia, an assistant professor in the School of the Environment and the African Studies Centre in the Faculty of Arts & Science, with shaping her academic path. Kirigia encouraged her to take his courses; she enrolled in a fourth-year class in second year and a master’s-level course in third year, both focused on climate and environmental justice in Africa.

“I wanted to pursue a path that humanized environmental studies.”

“They were the best courses I’ve ever taken,” Ngure says. “He taught us how climate and the environment isn’t divorced from human life, and that really set in stone what I wanted to do.”

At the Jackman Humanities Institute, she also met Lindelwa Dalamba, a musicology historian of South African mining-era songs, who she will work at the University of the Western Cape. She says meeting Black scholars working in her areas of interest was especially meaningful, as mentors with shared research interests had not always been accessible.

“Finding mentors at U of T and beyond who took these perspectives seriously reinforced my desire to pursue research in and about Africa beyond the undergraduate level,” Ngure says. “It has instilled in me a responsibility to continue creating spaces for deeper academic engagement with our perspectives and histories.”

Her academic work has earned several awards and scholarships, including Dean’s List Scholar designation, the University of Toronto Excellence Award, the Douglas Pimlott Environmental Studies Scholarship and the Rodney White Environmental Studies Scholarship.

“I would have never known there was a whole world of this research out there,” Ngure says. “Building a network of people who will inspire you directly has made all the difference, and I hope other students actively seek and experience that.”