Africa

Research

Research in and about this continent is as varied as any other: it is at once fascinating, politicized and contentious. My interests in the continent are academic as well as personal. As a "white British male" I have an immutable colonial connection to the continent. As a researcher I am conscious of the impacts of being an outsider looking in. British and American Africa Studies vary widely in their approach and historical baggage brought to any research on the continent. My views and research on Africa, as a set of places and peoples, are framed by my other research interests: genocide and peacebuilding. 

The dynamics of colonialism and postcolonialism must be accounted for when researching any place and people in Africa. It is further crucial to understand how diverse African communities sense themselves and their own history. This approach is inherent to my analysis of narratives, insecurity, and memory. My ethnographic work carried out among participants in conflict in the 1990s Great Lakes region revealed important connections between these themes. 

I have further interests in expanding this narrative-based work to other groups of participants in this period and set of cases of genocide (Burundi 1972, Rwanda 1994, DRC 1996-1997). I am also interested in historical and current conflict in Cameroon underscored by the themes of narrative, postcolonialism and uses of "genocide" as an activist concept of victimhood.

Suggested reading

Teaching

Genocide and Civil War in the African Great Lakes region, Clark Unviersity (2021- present)

Why has the African Great Lakes region been the focus of much global attention? This course’s broad look at the region will seek to answer this question by focusing on its political conflicts and specificities. It will center on colonial and postcolonial developments of violence, identity, and space, using timelines of genocide and civil war to examine these themes. Learners will take an interdisciplinary historical and political view, analyzing the intersections of borders, political ideologies, and socially constructed spaces. Historical cases will be used to understand theories of development, genocide, civil war, and struggles for independence. For the purpose of this course, the Great Lakes region label covers: Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The region encompasses various ethnic, religious, and political cultures, including both Francophone and Anglophone colonial legacies, and distinct postcolonial realities. This seminar course is reading and writing intensive, and employs a decolonized approach to African Studies. 

Rwanda: Colonialism, Genocide, and Rebellion, Clark University (2023)

Rwanda, like many colonized African states, has a turbulent history of struggles for independence and against minority discrimination. Yet, the mass violence of 1990s Rwanda and its regional impact is unlike other events in the continent. From April to May 1994, at least 500,000 Rwandans died at an unprecedented pace. This course offers learners a before, middle, and end view of this genocide, including questions about the legacy of the genocide in contemporary Rwanda and the region. The course considers the impacts of European colonization and how this shapes recent and contemporary conflict and identity. Various theories on participation, reconciliation, memorialization in terms of genocide are considered as they have been shaped by this case. The concepts of rebellion to colonialism, dictatorship and ethnocratic politics, as well as to the current state, is explained as part of the evolution of African liberationism.   

African Political History, Brigham Young University (2021)

This course gives students exposure to African politics through Africa voices and lived experiences, offering opportunities to do original research. The course is reading and writing intensive, while offering a variety of assessment types, from report writing to podcast production, research design and video presentation. Students execute and deliver research projects from start to finish, including design, IRB assessment, literature review, conducting qualitative research and writing up findings. The course will be discussion driven with some lectures, making learner participation essential. Topics covered include decolonization, conflict (histories and transformation), economics and development, political structures, postcolonialism, global influence (in and out of Africa), and more. 

Making of the Modern World, University of Leeds (2015-2016)

This course examines the socio-economic and political effects of colonialism, the slave trade and capitalist industrialisation on the making of the contemporary world, including the current divide between the Global North and Global South. It analyses the history of colonial expansion, domination and exploitation, resistance to colonial rule, the attraction of socialism to post-independent governments, and explores the legacies of colonial rule across the Americas, Africa and Asia as well as recent efforts to address some of these legacies. It explores key features of the process of the making the modern world and its corresponding global political economy, and explores similarities and differences between past and present regarding some of these features. Students are introduced to some of the relevant key concepts in social sciences to further the analysis.

International Perspectives on Crime, University of Bradford (2015-2020)

This session of the IPC course examines trends in genocide violence through colonial and postcolonial cases and challenges the identity categories of "victim" and "perpetrator". Through the theme of borderlands it explores genocide in the 1990s African Great Lakes region. Overall, this course aims to provide you with a detailed knowledge of the subject area and to give you the opportunity to analyse and interpret the same. The course will apply historical approaches to provide sophisticated interpretations of international criminal justice issues which are of contemporary importance.

Fieldwork

I have experience in carrying out fieldwork in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. From 2017-2018 focused on the Banyamulenge soldiers residing in urban and metropolitan areas of these two countries. Ethnographic interviews were carried out with multiple participants in both the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre. Between 2021 and 2023 I have developed further fieldwork on this topic in the Banyamulenge diaspora across the UK, USA, Kenya, and Rwanda. This includes working with the team involed in the Gatumba Survivors Project.