I am a historian of eastern Africa, interested in (among many topics) the histories of science and scholarship, language, standardization, bureaucracy, creativity, and learning. My first book, A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili (Ohio University Press, November 2022), examines the long-term, interconnected processes that produced Standard Swahili as it is taught around the world today, zooming in on various moments of conversation, translation, and codification. My next project is an examination of the notions of “research” and “the researcher” in the context of turn-of-the-twentieth century East Africa. I am also very interested in the history of the postal system in Tanganyika/Tanzania, and I proudly serve as the Director of the Institute for the Humanities here at Mississippi State.

Princeton University
PhD in History, May 2018
Dissertation: “An Uncommon Standard: A Social and Intellectual History of Swahili, 1864-1925”

Princeton University
MA in History, September 2013
Fields: Pre-Colonial Africa; Modern Africa; Islam and the Indian Ocean

Yale University
BA in History, May 2008

Book

A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili

(Ohio University Press “New African Histories” Series, November 2022)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“When a Wonder is Not a Wonder: Swahili, Translation, and the Communication of Knowledge,” Isis 114, no.2 (June 2023: 233-248). 

“The Idea of the Upelekwa: Constructing a Transcontinental Community in Eastern Africa, 1888-1896,” Journal of the History of Ideas 81, no.1 (January 2020): 85-106.

“La Belle Époque from Eastern Africa: An Individual Experience of the ‘Globalizing’ World, 1898-1918,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 13, no.4 (November 2019): 584-600.

“Cutting pice and running away: Discipline, education and choice at the UMCA Boys' Industrial House, Zanzibar, 1901-1905,” Southern African Review of Education, Vol. 19, No. 2 (December 2013): 9-24.

Encyclopedia and Book Chapters

“History of the Standard Swahili Language,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Published online 30 January 2024. (https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.1012)

“Binding Words: Student Biographical Narratives and Religious Conversion,” in Klaas van Walraven (ed.), The Individual in African History: The Importance of Biography in African Historical Studies (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2020).

Popular Writing

“Colonial Archives and Decolonizing Impulses: Überlegungen zur Praxis afrikanischer Geschichte,” published in the blog of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (February 2024).

(https://blog.kulturwissenschaften.de/colonial-archives-and-decolonizing…)

“Kiswahili: how a standard version of the east African language was formed—and spread across the world,” published in the online periodical “The Conversation” (July 2023).

(https://theconversation.com/kiswahili-how-a-standard-version-of-the-eas…)

Modern Africa – undergraduate survey

            African Civilizations – undergraduate survey

            Justice After Empire – first-year undergraduate seminar

            Imperialism and Colonialism in Africa – graduate seminar

            Africa in the History of Science – graduate seminar

            History of Science – graduate seminar

            Global Colonialism and Imperialism – graduate seminar

            Histories of Time – graduate seminar

            Comparative Slavery – graduate seminar

            Historiography – graduate seminar

Curriculum Vitae

Scholarly Materials