Research interests

My main research project is on 'Children at War: A History of Child Soldiering in Africa, c.1890-2015', funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme. The project traces historical patterns in the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict across Africa, and also analyzes the evolution of humanitarian campaigning and transnational advocacy against children's involvement in conflict in 1970s to the present. I am interested more widely in African gender histories, histories of youth and childhood, violence and warfare in Africa, anti-landmine campaigning, and in global histories of humanitarianism and human rights.

My other research interests are in the history of law, violence and punishment in Africa, particularly during the colonial period. My doctoral research focused on the use of the death penalty in Britain’s African colonies, using this to explore the nature of colonial rule, and attitudes to murder and criminality. I am currently working on revising my thesis, ‘Imperial Gallows: Capital Punishment, Violence and Colonial Rule in Britain’s African Territories, c.1908-68’ for publication. I have conducted archival research in Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Tanzania and Jamaica. I have published on murder and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, gendered violence, prison systems, forced labour, and juvenile delinquency in British colonial Africa. I am also working on a study of human rights and truth and reconciliation in Ghana.

Research collaborations

I am part of the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy with the University of Mainz and the International Committee of the Red Cross: http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de/. I am also a member of the Leverhulme-funded 'Understanding Insurgencies' research network across Exeter, Oxford, Warwick, Glasgow, CNRS Paris, Quebec, and KITLV Leiden. http://understandinginsurgencies.exeter.ac.uk/

Research supervision

I am the College of Humanities Director of Postgraduate Research. I am a very keen PhD supervisor and am happy to supervise students in the fields of African history and imperial/global history, and in particular those with an interest in the following areas:

• histories of colonial law
• crime and punishment
• death penalty
• violence
• conflict and warfare
• transitional justice and post-conflict reconciliation
• human rights
• histories of global humanitarianism
• gender
• childhood and youth
• human-animal relations

I also coordinate the College of Humanities PGR Career Development and Training Workshops.

I have acted as an external PhD examiner in African Studies for SOAS and Birmingham.

Research students

I am currently supervising the following doctoral candidates:

• Beth Rebisz (History, AHRC SWW DTP) on women and humanitarian interventions in the Mau Mau Emergency, Kenya, 1952-59.
• Diana Valencia Duarte (History, Exeter Global Excellence scholar) on food in/security and environmental history in Colombia c.1960-90
• Marlen von Reith (History) on British and German discourses on child soldiering 
• Polly Winfield (Anthropology, ESRC SW DTP) on museum engagement and transitional justice in South Africa
• Robin Fiore (Anthrozoology) on human-wildlife conflict in Kenya 
• Betsy Lewis-Holmes (History) on health, fitness and exercise for girls in Victorian England
• Yuan Wang (Anthrozoology, China Scholarship Council) on human-animal relations in safari tourism in Kenya
• Francesca Baldwin (AHRC SWW DTP, History, Reading) on women in Eritrean conflict
• Liang Wan (Wellcome 'Connecting Three Worlds' grant, History) on accupuncture and the globalization of Chinese socialist medicine
• Shibani Das (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, History) on decolonizing telecommunications in the British empire

My completed PhD students are:

• Rhian Keyse (History, AHRC) - on forced/early marriage in British colonial Africa, c. 1920-50s. Recently awarded 3yr postdoctoral fellowship on Prof Joanna Bourke's Wellcome-funded project on medico-legal responses to sexual violence.
• Emily Bridger (History, Exeter International Scholarship) on female youth in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Now a UKRI Future Leader fellow and Senior Lecturer in History at Exeter 
• Temilola Alanamu (History, Exeter International Scholarship) - gendered lifecycles in nineteenth-century Abeokuta, Nigeria. Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University of Kent
• Elizabeth Laruni (History, Exeter Home/EU Scholarship) - political mobilization of Acholi identity in Northern Uganda, 1960-85. NORHED postdoctoral scholar at Makerere University, Uganda. Now Peacebuilding Adviser on Gender at International Alert. 
• Gareth Curless (History, ESRC) - political economies of labour and violence in Sudan. Now an ESRC Future Leader fellow and Senior Lecturer in History at Exeter
• Stuart Mole - the Commonwealth and Apartheid South Africa.
• Charlotte Kelsted (History, AHRC SWW DTP) on British women and intimate colonialisms in mandate Palestine

Other information

Member of African Studies Association

Senior Member, Wolfson College Cambridge

Contribution to discipline

I am a two-term Council member of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom

Teaching

I teach broadly across the field of modern African history, with a strong interdisciplinary focus, drawing perspectives from anthropology, politics, law, and development studies. My teaching is strongly informed by my research, with a focus on gender and youth histories, as well as issues related to conflict, humanitarianism and human rights, and I work with my students to historize and stage critical discussions and debates on contemporary issues ranging from war crimes and development aid to gender and sexual based violence, to political corruption and HIV/AIDS . I have recently been a runner up in the Student Guild Research Inspired Teaching Award. 

Modules taught

• HIH2001 - Doing History: Perspectives on Sources
• HIH3005 - General Third-Year Dissertation
• HIH3208 - Child Soldiers - War, Society and Humanitarianism in Africa: Sources
• HIH3293 - Child Soldiers - War, Society and Humanitarianism in Africa: Context
• HIH3628 - Civil Wars

Biography

I grew up in Scotland, Bulgaria, Russia and Tanzania. I read for a BA in Modern History at the University of Oxford, before going on to complete an MSt in Imperial and Commonwealth History at the same institution in 2003, where I wrote my dissertation on the Tanganyikan penal system, c.1920-45. After a year spent living in Egypt and Jamaica, I returned to Oxford where I completed my DPhil. in Modern History at St Cross College in 2008, where I was an AHRC Doctoral Scholarship holder and Beit Research Scholar. My doctorate was written on the subject of capital punishment in British colonial Africa. I  spent a year lecturing in African and World History at the University of Cambridge, where I was a Fellow of Wolfson College, before arriving at Exeter in September 2008.