New Books in African Studies
Episodes
D. Vance Smith, "Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
02 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A major new look at Africa’s influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe.Virgil. Chaucer. ...
Oil and Militancy in Nigeria: A Conversation with Noo Saro-Wiwa
26 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia Univ...
Michael W. Tuck, "The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World" (Brill, 2026)
08 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (Brill, 2026) historian D...
Bimbola Akinbola, "Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art" (Duke UP, 2025)
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art (Duke University Press, 2025), Bimbola Akinbola redir...
Stephen Onyango Ouma, "Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation" (Brill, 2026)
05 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
I had a substantive conversation with Dr. Stephen Onyango Ouma, author of Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation (Bril...
Hilary Matfess, "After Liberation: Women and the Politics of Expectations in Rebel-to-Party Transitions" (Stanford UP, 2026)
05 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
War offers opportunities for women to liberate their communities and build a better life for themselves. When women join rebel groups, they often take...
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and...
Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)
29 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the fo...
Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)
29 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Correction: In the interview, the host mistakenly mentioned that Prof. Ofuasia is teaching the University of Pretoria. In reality, Prof Ofuasia is c...
Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)
29 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focus...
Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of c...
Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
21 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with histori...
Maria A. Sanchez, "Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts" (Cornell UP, 2026)
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Maria A. Sanchez tackles a central tension in global governance:...
Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)
15 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Ghana, much as in other parts of the Global South, postcolonial leaders aimed for industrial growth through the establishment of affordable hydroel...
Jessica Ann Levy, "Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics, (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), traces the rise of Black...
Selina Nwulu, "Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures" (Chatto & Windus, 2025)
11 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Globally, Black people are among the most affected by the climate crisis,...
Why Senegal’s Democracy Survived
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 2024, Senegal faced a severe constitutional and electoral crisis. The presidential vote was postponed, tensions escalated, and fears of democratic ...
Wendy Wolford, "The Plantation Ideal: Landscapes of Extraction in Mozambique" (U California Press, 2025)
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Plantations have been the privileged tool of colonial rule and extraction in Mozambique for more than one hundred years despite never having delivered...
Carl Death, "African Climate Futures" (Oxford UP, 2025)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. African Climate Futures (Oxford UP, 2025) shows how cli...
Nadine Gordimer: “Living in South Africa’s Interregnum” James Lecture, October 14, 1982
15 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit Nadine Gordimer’s James Lecture on the political landscape of South Africa, presented at the New Yor...
Claire Nicolas, "Une si longue course: Sport, genre, et citoyenneté au Ghana et en Côte d’Ivoire (années 1900-1970)" (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2024)
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Claire Nicolas, a chercheuse du Fonds National Suisse at Basel University, a holder of a prestigious Ambizione Research Grant, ...
Florian Wagner, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Florian Wagner about his new book Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 (Cambridge UP, 2022). F...
Todd Cleveland, "Africa and the Olympics: Winning Away from the Podium" (Ohio UP, 2024)
07 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
At the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (held in 2021 due to COVID-19), the fifty-four African countries that participated finished the tournament with the lo...
Leslie James, "The Moving Word: How the West African and Caribbean Press Shaped Black Political Thought, 1935-1960" (Harvard UP, 2025)
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1930s and 1940s, amid intensifying anticolonial activism across the British Empire, dozens of new West African and Caribbean newspapers printed...
Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts ...
Nathan Munier, "Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, ...
Brahim El Guabli, "Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences" (U California Press, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (U California Press, 2025) traces the cultural and intellectual histories t...
Iain Jackson et. al., "Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company (Bloomsbury, 2025) pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the...
Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa (U Chicago Press, 2025) by Professor Toby Green t...
Alaina M. Morgan, "Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora" (UNC Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Alaina Morgan's Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025) introduces the conc...
Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Author Noam Sienna unveils a vast Sephardic world created by these books. This literary network transcended geographical boundaries, connecting Jewish...
Charles G. Thomas, "Ujamaa's Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defence Force, 1964-1979" (Ohio UP, 2024)
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The immediate postcolonial moment brought both promise and peril for the states of Africa and their security. The process of decolonization generated ...
Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, a...
Riley Linebaugh, "Curating the Colonial Past: The 'Migrated Archives' and the Struggle for Kenya's History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s, British colonial administrations in East Africa organized the systematic destruction and removal of secret documents from colonies...
Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French
20 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-sellin...
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships...
Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery, "Fela: Music Is the Weapon" (Amistad Press, 2025)
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A spectacular graphic novel about the life and times of the legendary Fela Kuti—the Pan-African frontman, multi-instrumentalist, sociopolitical powe...
Peace A. Medie, "Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa" (Oxford UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020), Peace A. Medie studies the domestic impl...
Philip Janzen, "An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean" (Duke UP, 2025)
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2025), Philip Janzen traces the intellectual trajectories...
Ali Anooshahr, "Slavery in the Early Mughal World: The Life and Thoughts of Jawhar Aftabachi (1520s–1580s)" (Oxford UP, 2025)
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jawhar Aftabachi was enslaved as a child by the Ottomans in the Black Sea region in the early sixteenth century. He was then sold to the Ottoman admir...
Anny Gaul, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (U California Press, 2025)
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuis...
Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Derbew’s new book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022) asks how should articulations of blackness from the fifth ce...
Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the...
Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) t...
Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, "African Women’s Histories in European Narratives: The Afropolitan Krio Fernandino Diaspora (1850-1996)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Little is known about the African women who came to Europe from the 1870s onwards, nor do we dare to imagine them as wealthy, elegantly dressed indivi...
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? Marshalling original data on counterr...
Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and str...
Jessica Catherine Reuther, "The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720–1940" (Indiana UP, 2025)
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1720s to the 1940s, parents in the kingdom and later colony of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) developed and sustained the common practic...
Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of th...
Two Decades On: The African Union, Power, and Africa’s Democratic Future
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the African Union was founded in 2002, it promised to deliver a more united, prosperous, and people-centred continent. Two decades later, Africa’...
Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, t...
Loic De Canniere, "The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labour Markets and Welfare" (Anthem, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan conti...
Loic De Canniere, "The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labour Markets and Welfare" (Anthem, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan conti...
Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary n...
Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reim...
Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coa...
Julia Ross Cummiskey, "Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global" (Ohio UP, 2024)
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global (Ohio UP, 2024) presents the stories of scientists at the Uganda Virus Research...
Mahboob Qirvanian and Behnaz Mirzai, "Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiog...
Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn, "China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement" (Columbia UP, 2023)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since Xi Jinping’s accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China’s relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased ...
Alex Egodotaye Asakitikpi and Aretha Oluwakemi Asakitikpi, "Modern Nigeria" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Modern Nigeria: Understanding Modern Nations (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a collaborative effort that explores Nigeria's historical context and emphasises ...
Marcia C. Schenck, "Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1...
Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywher...
Erin M.B. O'Halloran, "East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars" (Stanford UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between the First and Second World Wars, activists across the British Empire began to think about what their homes might look like as independent nati...
Rosemary Admiral, "Living Law: Women and Legality in Marinid Morocco" (Syracuse UP, 2025)
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Rosemary Admiral provides a groundbreaking history of women’s legal engagement in Marinid Morocco between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries...
Timothy Williams, "Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape" (Bristol UP, 2025)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (Bristol UP, 2025) explores how political actors draw on memories of ...
Julia Rensing, "Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art" (Transcript Publishing, 2025)
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Namibia’s colonial history casts a long shadow over the country’s present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and So...
Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei...
Wendell Marsh, "Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities" (Columbia UP, 2025)
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of know...
Devin Smart, "Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City" (Ohio UP, 2025)
21 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City (Ohio UP, 2025) is an urban history that connects town and c...
Shakirah E. Hudani, "Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda (U of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Shakirah Hudani examines a “material poli...
Rose Casey, "Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style" (Fordham UP, 2025)
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style (Fordham UP, 2025) analyzes vanguard legal actions and literary innovations to reveal con...
j. Siguru Wahutu, "In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge UP, 2025) unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces...
William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the wor...
Daisy Livingston, "Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Pape...
Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of t...
Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Hu...
Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the S...
Mariam F. Ayad ed., "Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times" (American University in Cairo Press, 2024)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times (American University in Cairo Press 2024) brings together fourteen contributions from globa...
Adam A. Blackler, "An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the twentieth century, depictions of the colonized world were prevalent throughout the German metropole. Tobacco advertisements catered...
Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position ...
Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that E...
Domale Dube, "Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice" (University of Illinois Press, 2025)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Glimpse of Ogoni Women’s Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbo...
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary histo...
Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022)
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The African Union's threat to lead African states' mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court in 2008 marked just one of many encounters th...
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...
Klaus Bachmann, "The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore (Routledge, 2025) combines social science concepts, hist...
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the...
M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrat...
Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover ...
John Nott, "Between Feast Famine: Food, Health, and the History of Ghana's Long Twentieth Century" (UCL Press, 2025)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ghana’s twentieth century was one of dramatic political, economic, and environmental change. Sparked initially by the impositions of colonial rule, ...
Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, cli...
Alpha Nkuranga, "Born to Walk: My Journey of Trials and Resilience" (Goose Lane, 2024)
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Alpha Nkuranga about her deeply powerful and unforgettable memoir, Born to Walk: My Journey of T...
Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austi...
Tochi Onyebuchi, "Harmattan Season: A Novel" (Tor Books, 2025)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel Harmattan Season: A Novel (Tor Books, 2025) follows Boubacar, a veteran and private eye living in French occupied West...
Ioana Emy Matesan, "The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Research shows that repression can lead to both radicalization and deradicalization. When does it drive groups to pick up arms, and under what conditi...
Emmanuel Akyeampong, "Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders" (Indiana UP, 2023)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of in...
Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. Wh...
Ulf Laessing, "Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi" (Hurst, 2020)
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why has Libya fallen apart since 2011? The world has largely given up trying to understand how the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi has left th...
Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security" (Bristol University Press, 2024)
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Femin...
Sarah Nagaty, "The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolutio...