Hailing from Tanzania, home of the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, Immaculata “Imma” Mwanja, has brought her summit-reaching spirit to University Libraries. As the geospatial data curator in the data management and curation services department, she is charting new territory and bringing a wealth of international experience and a passion for using geospatial data to improve lives.
A journey from Tanzania to Virginia Tech
Growing up in Tanzania, she witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by cities with informal construction, pollution, flooding, and congestion. Inspired by her aunt, she pursued a degree in urban and regional planning at Ardhi University. During her studies and an internship with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, she found her footing in geographic information systems (GIS) and was hired to collect data in the field, map infrastructure, and then clean the data that would be used to improve infrastructure in the city. Mwanja’s first big project was called Ramani Huria, which in Swahili is “open map,” to collect and visualize information in Dar es Salaam to make the city more resilient to climate change.
Mwanja then became the operations manager for a local organization called OpenMap Development in Tanzania, and after two years she became a global projects associate for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Her work led her to Germany, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, Senegal, and Indonesia. One of her notable projects was Women-Centered Disaster Resilience in Small Island Developing States, which focused on working with women and girls to help them gain critical mapping skills. “It aimed to build local disaster resilience with a gender perspective by fostering collaboration among women leaders and helped me personally to think of inclusion and diversity in a very new and interesting perspective,” said Mwanja. “Throughout it all, I became a strong advocate for using data and technology to improve people’s lives, especially in developing countries.”
A move to Virginia Tech
At University Libraries, Mwanja’s role as geospatial data curator allows her to guide faculty, staff, and students through the terrain of their geospatial mapping needs. Her responsibilities include
- Helping researchers find data sets for map creation
- Supporting the map-making process
- Giving guest lectures to classes on geospatial mapping
- Curating data sets for the Virginia Tech Data Repository
Mwanja is particularly excited about her current project, which might be her most challenging summit yet. In collaboration with a history professor and two student employees, Mwanja serves as a co-principal investigator for the Chicago Covenants grant project, which focuses on documenting and interpreting racial segregation and racial covenants in Chicago and neighboring Cook County. These covenants include explicit racial restrictions that forbid the properties from ever being inhabited or owned by anyone not of the Caucasian race. This multidisciplinary project involves
- Researchers in Chicago identifying source documents
- The Digital Imaging Lab digitizing covenants and plat restrictions
- Metadata team identifying and extracting metadata
- Mwanja’s Mapping Team, including two students, drawing the covenant’s boundaries and mapping and visualizing the covenants on the map
The project’s mission is to help current property owners identify neighborhoods with racial restrictive language in their deeds and facilitate the removal of such language. The team was recently awarded new funding under the Library Collaborative Grant to continue this same work in Lake County, Illinois.
“These are very important projects to me personally as someone with a planning background, but also to the land owners,” said Mwanja. “They are projects that involve diversity and inclusion of people of color and other minorities to be able to access land. Even though these restrictions were terminated in the 20th century, some houses still have the racial restriction clauses to date.”
A panoramic view
From her vantage point in the library, Mwanja has a panoramic view of the research landscape. Her international background and experience bring a unique perspective to the work and serving the greater Virginia Tech community with an inclusive approach.
“I have seen firsthand how data and mapping can change lives,” Mwanja said. “They say knowledge is power and giving people access to tools and data can help them make important decisions.” Her passion for using GIS and mapping in diverse sectors makes her an asset to the university community.
“As someone who comes from a very different culture and a nonacademic background, I wasn’t sure what to expect coming to work at an American university,” said Mwanja. “Everyday people surprise me with their kindness, willingness to help, and quick responses. You don’t expect that in a big institution like this, but Virginia Tech has shown me otherwise.”
Her experience collaborating with peer institutions has been eye-opening, and she credits her colleagues for facilitating these valuable learning opportunities. Mwanja recounted a recent dinner with Tanzanian students who praised the accessibility of resources at the library. “It made me really happy hearing them say this,” said Mwanja, “and I could see how bright their eyes lit up when they were talking about the Libraries. That made me believe that I made the right decision coming to work for the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, because I have always wanted to have an impact.”
