I research the history of European colonialism and modern Africa, with a particular interest in the social consequences of imperial rule, infrastructural expansion, and the afterlives of empire. My dissertation, The Shadow Line: Railway and Society in Colonial East Africa, c. 1890–1914, used the Uganda Railway as a lens to study the effects of colonisation and infrastructural development on East African communities. By analysing urban markets, deforestation in the Kenyan highlands, community responses to newly imposed borders, emerging wage labour, and military resistance, I demonstrated how the railway accelerated social disintegration whilst serving as an instrument of colonial conquest.
The book manuscript emerging from this research argues that colonial railways produced a “doubling effect,” creating parallel sets of political, economic, and cultural structures. Railways enabled the British and other colonial powers to build state institutions serving white settler society whilst simultaneously fragmenting African political institutions, economic relations, and cultural forms. These African structures had to be reconstructed under the colonial state’s shadow and in constant contestation with it. The resulting doubled structures, which persist in today’s formal-informal distinctions, disadvantaged African populations and shaped the unequal development patterns and global participation that characterised the twentieth century.
Current projects
Alongside this manuscript, I am developing two book projects. The first is a popular history of Black Germany from the 1880s to the 2000s, tracing the lives of Africans from Germany’s former colonies who settled in the metropole. The second examines Mau Mau and anti-colonial struggles in Nairobi, focusing on the urban grammar of protest, everyday resistance, and the networks that sustained political activism between the 1930s and 1960s.
My additional research extends in three directions: Maasai history, the afterlife of empire, and the history of imperial infrastructures. In Maasai history, I am studying the Kedong’ massacre, Maasai participation in the First World War, and responses to Mau Mau, among other topics. My work on the afterlife of empire engages with contemporary European history, analysing how Germany has confronted its colonial past. A further strand explores the global history of infrastructures and colonial railways, tracing how systems of connection established durable patterns of inequality and exclusion.
Organised conferences, workshops & panels
(19–20 March 2026)
Cities and Decolonization: Anti-colonial Struggles, Urban Protest, and Global Solidarities (Wadham College, Oxford)
(21–23 April 2026)
Violences coloniales, résistances et héritages en Afrique: perspectives et critiques (Université de Lomé, Togo)
2025
Panel at the biennial conference of the German Historical Association (“Historikertag”), “‘Outsiders’: Histories of Black People in Germany” (Bonn)
2023
The Elephant in the Room: Confronting Bremen’s Colonial Legacy (Bremen)
2023
Worlds Apart? Futures of Global History (Weltmuseum Wien, Austria)
2022
Without Me! ‘Practices of Negation’ in Past and Present (Gut Siggen, Heringsdorf)
2022
Uneasy Neighbours: Conflict and Control in the Colonial City, c. 1870–1940 (Bremen)
2022
Panel at the IFPH world conference, “Coming to Terms with the Colonial Past: Remembering and Exhibiting Colonialism in Africa and Europe” (Berlin)
2020
Panel at the Austrian Contemporary History Day, “Food, Subject, and Meaning: Eating Practices in Affluent Societies” (Innsbruck)
2019
Panel at the SHOT annual conference, “Railway Imperialism Reconsidered: Colonialism, Infrastructure, and Power” (Milan)
2019
Panel at the biennial conference of the African Studies Association of Africa, “Memories that Move: Past and Present of Colonial Infrastructures” (Nairobi)
2016
You are what you do not eat! Health and Food since 1850 (Berlin)
2015
Health Society: Healthy Eating between Myth and Evidence (Leifers, Italy)
Talks and invited keynotes
2025
Power Relations: Naturalization Applications of Black People from the German Empire to National Socialism (biennial conference of the German Historical Association, “Historikertag”, Bonn, 16.9.2025)
Transnational Roots of Kenya’s Strike Movement: Railway Construction Workers’ Struggle in East Africa (Paul T. Zeleza conference, Howard University, Washington, D.C., 22.5.2025)
‘The Maasai Need to Wear Trousers’: Voluntariness, Coercion, and Political Participation in Postcolonial East Africa (invited keynote, University of Erfurt, 23.4.2025)
2024
Forgotten Reckoning? Bremen and the History of German Colonialism (International Symposium on the History of Chinese-German Relations and the Urban History of Qingdao, Qingdao, 26.11.2024)
2023
Resistance in the Colonial Context? Maasai and Modernity in East Africa (Practices of Negation workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, 8.12.2023)
The Bremen Africa Archive and its Future (The Elephant in the Room: Confronting Bremen’s Colonial Legacy conference, Bremen, 30.11.2023)
Imagined Solidarities: Anti-Colonial Protests and the Global Struggle against Empire in the Twentieth Century (Researching Global Solidarity workshop, University of Bremen, 6.10.2023)
Oral Tradition and the History of the Maasai (lecture series on oral history, Ruhr University Bochum, summer semester 2023)
Cities that Unmade an Empire: Venues of Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Research seminar, University of Leipzig, 28.4.2023)
Whispers of Unrest: Colonial Cities and the End of Empire, c. 1880–1980 (German Historical Conference colloquium, London, 20.2.2023)
2022
Not Modern, not European: The Maasai in the Colonial History of East Africa (Without Me! ‘Practices of Negation’ in Past and Present workshop, Siggen/Heringsdorf, 13.10.2022)
Subaltern Solidarities: The Uganda Railway, Labour Migration, and Colonial Kenya’s First Workers’ Strike, 1896–1914 (Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives workshop, German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., 10–13.10.2022)
Tourism Value: Engaging with the Colonial Past in Kenya’s National Museums (IFPH world conference, Berlin, 17.8.2022)
Mau Mau in Nairobi: Urban Networks of Unrest (Uneasy Neighbours: Conflict and Control in the Colonial City, c. 1870–1940 conference, University of Bremen, 21.7.2022)
The Kedong’ Massacre: A Reinterpretation (Research seminar, University of Bremen, 15.7.2022)
The Construction of the Uganda Railway as Global History (Research seminar, University of Giessen, 6.7.2022)
Movable Labour: South Asian Workers and the Construction of the Uganda Railway (The Time and Space of Railways: Markets, Work and Circulation in South Asia conference, University of Göttingen, 17.6.2022)
2021
The Scramble for Africa and Railway Construction: Why was the Uganda Railway Built? (ICOHTEC Symposium, Prague, 25–31.7.2021)
Of Profits and Losses: The Indian Rupee in Kenya, c. 1880–1920 (Territories, State and Nation in Economic and Social History conference, Vienna, 7–9.4.2021)
Intangible Heritage: The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and their Global (After)Lives (Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property conference, 29.1.2021)
2020
Beyond Master Plans: Realities of Town Planning in Colonial Contexts (Research seminar, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 23.11.2020)
Not Eating: From Body to Society (Austrian Contemporary History Day, Innsbruck, 16–18.4.2020)
The Shadow Line: Railway and Society in Colonial East Africa, c. 1890–1914 (Winter school on Global History: Challenges and Opportunities, New Delhi, 16–21.2.2020)
How to Write a Global History of the Uganda Railway (Research seminar, University of Bremen, 7.1.2020)
2019
What Sired the Nation? The Uganda Railway and Memory Work in Kenya, 1890–2000 (Places of Progress? Re-Evaluating the Sites of High Tech Controversies conference, Braunschweig, 17.9.2019)
2018
Targeting the Artery of East Africa: The Anglo-German Conflict and the Uganda Railway in World War I (Railways and World War One conference, Budapest, 28.11.–1.12.2018)
Nairobi: The Making of a European City, c. 1890–1914 (Transregional Academy on Infrastructures, Regions and Urbanizations, Singapore, 2.10.2018)
Railways and (Global) Integration: Remarks from an African Historian’s Perspective (ICOHTEC Symposium, Saint-Étienne, France, 17–21.7.2018)
Burned Forests: Railway, Deforestation, and Displacement in Kenya, 1895–1914 (VAD conference, University of Leipzig, 29.6.2018)
Gardening Rails: Islands, Power, and Slavery on the Swahili Coast, c. 1890–1914 (Europe and the World: Between Colonialism and Globalisation workshop, Villa Vigoni, 18–22.6.2018)
Losses of Connectivity: The Uganda Railway and Globalization in East Africa, 1890–1914 (Research seminar, Freie Universität Berlin, 7.6.2018)
Fractured Spaces: East Africa, the Uganda Railway, and Patterns of Disintegration, c. 1890–1914 (European History across Boundaries workshop, Mainz, 24–26.1.2018)
2017
(Un)Making Connections: East Africa, the Uganda Railway and the Question of Globalisation, c. 1890–1914 (Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop, IHR London, 16.10.2017)
To Whom the City Belongs: Colonial Nairobi and the Politics of Exclusion, c. 1890–1914 (Infrastructure and the Making of Urban Space: Critical Approaches workshop, Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin, 21–22.9.2017)
Fractured Spaces: The Uganda Railway and the Transformation of the World, 1896–1914 (Research seminar, Humboldt University Berlin, 10.7.2017)
Beyond the Individual: Early Workers’ Autobiographies and the Question of Authorship, c. 1850–1914 (The Author – Wanted, Dead or Alive: New Perspectives on the Concept of Authorship, 1700–1900, conference, European University Institute, Florence, 5–6.6.2017)
2016
Infrastructure and Space: The Construction of the Uganda Railway in East Africa, 1896–1901 (Research seminar, University of Leipzig, 13.12.2016)
Imperialism, Technology, and Landscape: East Africa and the Construction of the Uganda Railway, 1896–1903 (German Historical Institute colloquium, London, 23.8.2016)
Historiographical Change: Society, Culture, and Knowledge as Paradigms in History (Research seminar, Freie Universität Berlin, 8.7.2016)
Health and Food: Historical Reflections (You Are What You Do Not Eat! Health and Food since 1850 conference, Freie Universität Berlin, 27.2.2016)
2015
Facing Hunger: Proletarian Perspectives on Health and Food around 1900 (Health Society: Healthy Eating between Myth and Evidence workshop, Leifers, Italy, 15–20.11.2015)
Broken Heart: Does Lovesickness Have a History? (meeting of DAAD scholarship holders, Freie Universität Berlin, 11.7.2015)
2014
The Dreadful Ms. Cholera: Knowledge and Experiences of Epidemics in Workers’ Autobiographical Texts (Archiv für Sozialgeschichte workshop, Berlin, 20–21.11.2014)
Condemned to Sickness: Workers’ Representations of Health and Disease, 1850–1918 (Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar at the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., 7–10.5.2014)
Agony of the Apollonian: The ‘Hidden’ History of Health and Sickness in Modernity, 1850–1918 (Research seminar, Freie Universität Berlin, 10.1.2014)
