I specialize in modern Africa and the history of health. I received an MA from the University of York and worked at the U.S. National Archives in public/educational outreach and writing before pursuing further graduate training in History. I received my Ph.D from Columbia University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in global health and African Studies at Emory University, before joining the Pitt faculty in 2014. My primary appointment is in the Department of History and I am an affiliated faculty member in History and Philosophy of Science and in Africana Studies, as well as the Global Studies Center and the Center for African Studies. I am also an MPH candidate in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Pitt Public Health.
My first book, The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890–1920, was published in 2019 by Ohio University Press. It explores the history of African politics and colonial public health, focusing on sleeping sickness at Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika.
Fields:
Modern Africa
History of Public Health and Medicine
African/Comparative Environmental History
Comparative Imperialism and Colonialism
Teaching:
History of Africa since 1800
History of Africa before 1800
History of Global Health
Health Controversies in History
Disease and Health in Modern Africa (Frederick Honors College Seminar)
Historical Approaches and Methods
- PhD, Columbia University, 2012
Education & Training
- ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
- SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship
- CLIR-Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities
- Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies Dissertation Fellowship
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship
“Parasites and Priorities: The Early Evolution of “Neglected Disease” Initiatives and the History of a Global Health Agenda.” Medical Humanities 48, 2 (Jun 2022): 177-189.
The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890-1920 (New African Histories Series, Ohio University Press, 2019)
“Mapping the Infected Landscape: Colonial Knowledge, African Labor, and Sleeping Sickness Prevention in the Early Twentieth Century,” Environmental History, Forum: “From ‘Natural’ to ‘Artificial’ Disease Environments: Technology, Ecology and Human Health 1850-2010,” (2015).
“Ziba Politics and the German Sleeping Sickness Camp at Kigarama, Tanzania, 1907-14,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, Special Edition on the History of Medicine in East Africa (2014).
“Medical Auxiliaries and the Negotiation of Public Health in Colonial Northwestern Tanzania,” Journal of African History 54:3 (2013).
My current project, The Neglected Tropical Diseases in Global Health’s History and Present, examines the emergence of the “neglected tropical diseases” (NTDs) as an operative and imaginative category in global health, with specific reference to the experiences of African patients and communities, as well as transnational researchers, in the past 40 years. To further this multidisciplinary research, I hold an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, which has supported training in public health and infectious disease biology at Pitt Public Health, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the University of Chicago’s Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.
