Since 08/2013 Associate Professor of History, University of Illinois
08/2008 – 08/2013 Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois
09/2003 – 08/2013 Lecturer in African History, SOAS, University of London
Education
06/2003: PhD in African History, Northwestern University
05/1994: MA in History, University of Alabama
05/1991: BA in History and Political Science, University of Illinois
Fellowships
02/2022 – 06/2022: US Fulbright Scholar, Charles University, Prague
12/2005: Visiting Research Fellow, Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin)
09/1997 – 08/1998: Fulbright IIE Research Fellowship in Tanzania (University of Dar es Salaam
International Conferences & Invited Lectures
“Spy Hunting in the Archives: Decolonization, African Studies Politics and MI5 in London, 1956-1965,” presentation given to North American Society for Intelligence History Brown Bag, 6 April 2021
“Networkers and Gatekeepers: an outline history of the OAU African Liberation Committee, 1963-1970,” paper delivered at the 7th biennial European Conference on African Studies (ECAS2019), University of Edinburgh, 13 June 2019
“Domesticating Intelligence in Tanzania: an agent-based approach, 1954-74,” paper delivered at workshop entitled “The Secret Struggle for the Global South”, University of Warwick, 13 September 2018
“A history of radio listening in Tanzania, 1935-1965,” paper presented at workshop “Connecting the Wireless World: Global Radio History,” University of Denver, 28 June 2018
“‘Our eyes sparkle now and they can see’: self-improvement, political consciousness and social engineering in Tanzania’s adult literacy campaigns of the 1970s,” paper delivered at conference entitled “Decolonization(s) and Education: New Men and New Polities”, Humboldt University, Berlin, 27 November 2015
“Decolonization and its counterfactuals: narratives of liberation and treason in Tanzania and its neighboring states,” paper delivered at the Colonialism and Post-Colonialism in Contemporary Era seminar, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 6 July 2015
“Artisan Newspapers in the Age of Nationalism: R. M. Plantan’s Zuhra in Late Colonial Tanganyika, 1947-60,” paper delivered at the African Studies Association United Kingdom Biannual Conference, University of Sussex, 9 September 2014
“Debating the guidelines: literacy, text, and Socratic socialism in 1970s Tanzania,” paper delivered at the African Studies Workshop, University of Chicago, 6 May 2014
“The business of international news in the Anglo-American World, 1840-1920,” paper delivered at workshop entitled “The Political Economy of News in Anglo-American History”, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, organized by Richard John and Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, 30 August 2013
Keynote address entitled “Desire, Rents, & Entitlements: possible futures for Africa’s urban history,” given at the 5th symposium of the Ghent Africa Platform, with the theme “Urban Africa: multidisciplinary approaches to the African city”, 2 December 2011
“Money, mobility and citizenship in coastal East Africa,” paper presented at Fourth European Conference on African Studies, held at Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, 15 June 2011
“Information prices and propaganda values: Reuters, BBC, and the news business in 1960s East Africa,” paper presented at Center for International History, Columbia University, 25 March 2011
“Sovereignty and propaganda: coping with anti-colonial shortwave radio in British East Africa, 1940-1965,” paper presented at International History Workshop, University of Konstanz, 02 June 2009
“TANU Youth League, and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 1925-1973,” paper delivered at conference “Youth in Eastern Africa: Past and Present Perspectives,” co-hosted by the British Institute in Eastern Africa/Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique, Nyeri, Kenya, 29 June 2006
Research Grants
12/2013: Moody Research Grant, LBJ Presidential Library, Austin TX
08/2012 – 05/2015: Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies
08/2011 – 05/2012: Arnold O. Beckman Research Board Grant, University of Illinois
03/2006 – 08/2007: British Academy Small Research Grant (SG-41863)
05/2005: British Academy Overseas Travel Grant (OCG-40431), May 2005
Main Publications
Monographs
Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania. Athens OH: Ohio University Press (New African Histories Series), 2012 [winner of the 2013 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize, African Studies Association].
Edited Volumes, Journals, Book Series
Journal of Eastern African Studies. Editor, 01/2012 – 03/2021
Dar es Salaam: Histories from an emerging African metropolis (Dar es Salaam/Nairobi: Mkuki na Nyota/BIEA, 2007), co-edited with Andrew Burton and Lawi Yusuf
Selected Articles & Book Chapters
“Print Culture, Islam and the Politics of Caution in Late Colonial Dar es Salaam: A History of Ramadhan Machado Plantan’s Zuhra, 1947–1960,” Islamic Africa 12:1 (2022), forthcoming
“The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953-1974,” International History Review 43:1 (2021), 153-169.
“International News in the Age of Empire,” in Richard R. John and Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb (eds.), Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 107-132
“The Cold War battle over global news in East Africa: decolonization, the free flow of information and the media business, 1960-1980,” Journal of Global History 10:2 (2015), 333-356
“Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953-1964,” in Christopher J. Lee (ed.), Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 173-195
“Lowering the Sultan’s Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50:4 (2008), 831-861
“Blood enemies: exploitation and urban citizenship in the nationalist political thought of Tanzania, 1958-1975,” Journal of African History 47:3 (2006), 387-411
“Youth, the TANU Youth League, and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 1925-1973,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 76:2 (2006), 221-246.
