Ida Mukuka is an internationally renowned advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness and research. She’s worked with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, co-authored numerous articles, and addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Now, she is a pursuing her dream of a master's degree as an international student on scholarship in the graduate history program at the University of Waterloo. Her supervisor is Dr. Katherine Bruce-Lockhart.
For her Waterloo studies, Ida decided to conduct an auto-ethnographic study, allowing her to draw on her personal life history, her on-the-ground experience in Zambia, the larger socio-economic and political context of her work as well as in-depth archival research.
Ida worked for years at the Centre of Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) where she developed a successful support group program for pregnant women living with HIV which was a springboard to international advocacy and relationships.
Read the full account of her exciting story on Waterloo News: "Pursuing the dream of education."
Waterloo is a special place. It’s given me an opportunity at 50 to be able to do my master’s, something that has always been my dream. Education is a source of activism. It gives you authority. As an international student, I really appreciate this.
Ida Mukuka (r) and her oldest daughter at the Supreme Court in Zambia