The brand new History Dialogues Website is out! 

History Dialogues, a programme I founded and am teaching within the framework of the Global History Lab at Princeton University, supports, guides, and shares original research by student-researchers around the world. By training them in oral history and other historical research methods, we help new voices become narrators of history, and expand conceptions of what history is, and who its authors are. We believe in the right to research and the power of historical inquiry to spark conversations and connections across borders. Visit the website to participate in the global conversation about global history. 

Africa is a Country has launched a new blog series titled "Histories of Refuge". This series a product of an exploratory Workshop “Rethinking Refuge: Processes of Refuge Seeking” I organized in June 2019 at the Forum for Transregional Studies in Berlin. Madina Thiam has graciously curated this series, which features Christoph Kalter, Lazlo Passemiers, Rose Jaji, Keren Weitzberg, Alfred Tembo, Jochen Lingelbach, Aderito Machava, Njung George, Anita Vukovic, and myself. 

I am thrilled to announce the publication of the edited volume The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Researchers as part of McGill-Queen’s Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Series.  Edited by Kate Reed and myself, it features nine contributions by refugee and host-community researchers from Across Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

“This ambitious and exciting volume makes a critical intervention in the processes of historical silencing and upsets conventional understandings of historical scholarship. The book reminds us that refugees have not been afforded the right to write history; this is a powerful, poignant, rightfully challenged assertion, and this assertion is timely - if not now, when?”

Joanna Tague professor at Denison University and author of Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania: Refugee Power, Mobility, Education, and Rural Development 

I started my second semester at the University of Potsdam in Germany and am looking forward to many more to come!

I am thrilled to announce the open access publication of our edited volume Navigating Socialist Encounters. Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War!

Edited by Eric Burton, Anne Dietrich, Immanuel Harisch, and myself, this book firmly anchors African history in global history by illuminating the connections between African and East German actors and institutions during the Cold War. With a particular focus on agency and African influences on the GDR (and vice versa), the volume illuminates personal and institutional agency, reciprocal cultural transfers, migration, development, and solidarity.

I am excited to announce the launch of our H-Net Cross-Network “Refugees in African History”, which will bring together contributions from throughout H-Africa and H-Migration, and will serve as a space to exchange thoughts, interesting reads and helpful resources on the topic. Come check it out and subscribe! This, too, is the result of the exploratory workshop “Rethinking Refuge: Processes of Refuge Seeking” I organized in June 2019 at the Forum for Transregional Studies in Berlin, and I could not have done this without the help of the other editors Keren Weitzberg, Jochen Lingelbach and Johanna Wetzel.