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I welcome postgraduate interest in US empire, African American history, social movements, and the cold war.

20042026

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

I joined the University of Birmingham in 2019. I have previously taught in the History Department at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, and have held fellowships at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and, through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, at the American Studies Institute at the University of Rostock.

Research interests

I have published articles and book chapters on the knowledge production of social movements, the intersectional aspects of US empire, as well as race and US imperial culture. My first book, The Anticolonial Front: The African American Freedom Movement and Global Decolonization, 1945-1960, which was a finalist for the African American Intellectual History Society’s 2018 Pauli Murray Prize, took up the topics of anticommunism, the continuities of colonialism, the intricacies of popular front politics, and the limitations of liberalism.

I am editor, with Kirrily Freeman, of Reading the Postwar Future: Textual Turning Points from 1944 and Reading the New Global Order: Textual Transformations of 1989, each of which range across history, literature, film, and political theory to consider a diverse array of texts that were produced in a pivotal year in world history.

As co-author, with Radhika Natarajan, of the Public Books Imperialism Syllabus, and as author of public-facing reflections on fascism, the cold war, infrastructure, and automobility, I am also interested in taking part in public discourse on issues of the day.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  1. SDG 5 - Gender Equality
    SDG 5 Gender Equality
  2. SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
    SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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