The Centre for the History of Colonialisms is delighted to announce a new prize for the best third-year undergraduate dissertation in imperial and/or non-western history.
To be considered for the prize candidates must submit their dissertation by 12.00 on Friday 19 June 2015.
More information about the prize and how to submit your entry can be found in the Prizes section of the website.
A portrait of Serra at age 61 (1774)
The recent controversy over the canonisation of Junipero Serra raises some interesting questions, not only about the role of clerics and missionaries in the early stages of colonialism, but also about how history is used and re-represented in the media during these kinds of debates. The role of missionaries in empires is examined in detail in Emily Manktelow’s third-year course, ‘Empires of Religion’.
You can read more about the issue here:
The Guardian: ‘Junípero Serra’s brutal story in spotlight as pope prepares for canonisation’
CNN: ‘Hero or horror? Junipero Serra, priest behind Calif. missions, becomes a saint’
The Economist: ‘Sinner and saint’
The Centre for the History of Colonialisms is delighted to welcome Temi Alanamu to the team. Temi is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and will be researching gender and memory amongst the post-colonial youth of Nigeria.
Welcome to Kent, Temi!
The Centre for the History of Colonialisms is delighted to welcome Andy Cohen to the team! Andy will be researching and teaching on the topics of African history, decolonisation, internationalisation and the economic history of colonialism.
Welcome to Kent, Andy!
Gitxsan Totem Pole (1960), Thunderbird Park, Victoria, BC, Canada. Carved by Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt, and Tony Hunt
In June 2015, Emily Manktelow organised a panel at the 2015 Society of the History of Children and Youth conference in Vancouver on the topic of: ‘Imagining Colonial Futures: Children and the Politics of Belonging in the British Colonial World’. Christine Whyte also participated in this panel, which highlighted the the role of colonial children in imagining imperial futures. The panel placed childhood experiences, and adult expectations, at the heart of British imperial history, and reflected upon the importance of histories of childhood in the politics of imperial belonging. As such it explored children’s relationship with empire, with race and difference, and with the idea and practice of the colonial lives. Christine and Emily were joined by Onni Gust (Nottingham) and local talent Laura Ishiguro (UBC) and the papers, which spanned from the remote plains of colonial British Columbia to the crowded streets of 19th-century Bombay, sparked a lively debate about the relationships between colonial settings, ideas about the future and the role of children.
PANEL: Imagining Colonial Futures: Children and the Politics of Belonging in the British Colonial World.
SHCY Eighth Biennial Conference Program University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Wednesday, June 24 – Friday, June 26, 2015
University of British Columbia, Canada
Jack Hogan, PhD
Dr Jack Hogan has been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa. Jack completed his PhD as part of the centre in early 2015, under the supervision of Centre Director, Giacomo Macola.
The University of Kent’s Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies will be hosting a one-day, interdisciplinary conference on 22 May 2015. The conference, organised by Maria Ridda (University of Kent), Enrique Galvan-Alvarez (International University of La Rioja) and Ole Birk Laursen (University of Copenhagen), will include a keynote lecture from Priyamvada Gopal of the University of Cambridge.
Scholars working in the disciplines of history, literature, political science, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, human geography, religious studies and other related areas have been invited to submit proposals reflecting an interdisciplinary approach on the following themes:
More information can be found on the conference’s website and Facebook page.
Professor William Gervase Clarence-Smith will deliver a paper, ‘Animals of War in the Middle East, 1914-18’, to the Centre on Tuesday 10 February at 17.00 in Woolf Seminar Room 3. Tea, coffee and biscuits available for attendees.
Professor Clarence-Smith is Professor of the Economic History of Asia and Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is also the Chief Editor of the Journal of Global History and the author of, inter alia, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery(London : Hurst, 2006).
More information about Professor Clarence-Smith can be found on his SOAS profile page.
Jack Hogan successfully defended his PhD thesis, ‘The Ends of Slavery in Barotseland, Western Zambia (c. 1800-1925)’, in November 2014.
Dr Christine Whyte will be joining the School of History and the Centre for the History of Colonialisms as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in May 2015. Her project is entitled ‘Fostering Civilization: Liberians, imperialism and the family home, 1822-1865’.
After completing her PhD at ETH, Zurich, Dr Whyte has been a post-doctoral research fellow at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, working on a project analysing the connections between the origins of pan-Africanism and educational schemes in nineteenth-century Liberia and Sierra Leone.