• West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia

Ph.D., 2002

African History, with emphasis on Modern East Africa (colonial) Secondary fields are trans-Atlantic slave trade, African Development

• Ohio University, Athens, Ohio

M.A. 1992

African Studies

• Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama

B.A., March 1990

History

I teach courses that cover general African history, East African history, colonial African history, slavery and the slave trade, African labor history and forced labor.

My research focuses on the issue of forced labor in colonial East Africa.  More specifically, my work has analyzed the ways in which the use of forced labor evolved over time from clearly recognized forms of labor coercion to hidden, so-called, labor taxes or communal labor that were equally exploitative.

Director, African African American Studies Program (2012-2016)

Scholarly Books

Labor in Colonial Kenya after the Forced Labor Convention, 1930–1963 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya: The Legitimization of Coercion, 1912-1930 (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012)

Refereed Journal Articles

• "Emergency Communal Labor and Gender in Central Province During the Mau Mau War in Kenya, 1953-1960," Journal of the Middle East and Africa Vol. 11 No. 1 (2020)

• “Subjusdice” in Colonial Kenya: Women and Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya, 1920-1963, Eastern African Journal of Historical Studies Volume 1 2018, 195-223.

• “Virtual Abolition: The Economic Lattice of Luwalo Forced Labor in the Uganda Protectorate”

African Economic History

Vol. 45, No. 2 (2017)

• “The Windmill of Slavery: The British and Foreign Anti Slavery Society and Bonded Labor in East Africa”

Middle Ground Journal

No. 3, Fall (2011), 1-35

• “The Role of the Police in the Post Election Violence in Kenya, 2007/08

Journal of Third World Studies

Vol. 28, No. 2 Fall (2011), 259-275

• “The Northey Forced Labor Crisis: A Symptomatic Reading”

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Vol. 41, No. 2 (2008), 95-123

• “In the Interests of Community: Archdeacon Walter Owen and The Issue of Communal Forced Labor in Kenya, 1921-1930”

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Vol. 32, No. 1 January (2004), 19-40

• “Promethean Fire: Free labor Ideology and Trusteeship”

Journal of Cultural Studies

Vol. 3, No. 2 March (2001), 549-565

• Ohio Academy of History

• African Studies Association

• Third World Studies Association

• Middle States African Studies Association

• American Historical Association

• Association for the Study of the Middle East And Africa Research Grant (Summer 2018)

• Fulbright Scholar, Uganda (2016-2017)

• College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Grant (2013)

• Wright State University Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence, Early Career Achievement (2012)

• Fulbright Scholar, Kenya (2007-09)

• Winthrop University Research Council Grant (2006)

• University of Tennessee Provost's Professional Development Award (2003)

• NEH Summer Institute “Indian Ocean Cradle of Civilizations” University of Pennsylvania (2002)

• Dissertation Scholar in Residence, Ohio University(2000-2001)

• W. E. B. Du Bois Fellowship, West Virginia University (1995)

• Board of Regents Minority Doctoral Fellowship, West Virginia University (1995-1999)