The Journal of African History Podcast
The Journal of African History Podcast features interviews with historians whose work has been published in The Journal of African History, a leading peer-reviewed journal on Africa's past. Hosted by journal editors and occasional guest hosts, episodes explore how scholars find and interpret sources for African history, how authors' research contributes to historical debates, and how Africanist scholarship provides context for broader social and political discussions.
Episodes
A Year in African Historical Scholarship
Journal of African History Podcast: Volume 66 Retrospective
What does a year of cutting-edge African history scholarship reveal about where the field is heading? In this special episode marking the close of Volume 66, The Journal of African History managing editor Samuel Severson sits down with the journal’s regional editors—Abou Bamba (reviews and History Matters), Michelle Moyd (East Africa), Mo
Mark Deets on alternative futures of the Casamance
In this episode Mark Deets (AUC) joins editor Abou Bamba (Gettysburg) to discuss “Ambiguous Echoes of the Colonial Partition: Alternative Futures from the Casamançais Past in Senegal.” This featured review explores Séverine Awenengo Dalberto’s L’idée de la Casamance autonome (Karthala Edition, 2024) as well as the political controversy surrounding its publication. In the podcast, Deets further dis
David Wilson on fisheries management in Lake Malawi
In this episode, David Wilson (University of Strathclyde) joins guest host Ayodeji Adegbite (Brown University) to discuss the Open Access article, "Colonialism, Governance, and Fisheries: Perspectives from Lake Malawi," co-authored with Milo Gough, Bryson Nkhoma, Elias Chirwa, Charles Knapp, Tracy Morse, and Wapulumuka Mulwafu.
Wilson details how this article—situated at the intersection of enviro
Muoki Mbunga on the moral logics of Mau Mau fighters
Muoki Mbunga (Tufts University) joins East Africa editor Michelle Moyd to discuss his newly published open access article, “Who Deserves to Die? The Moral Logic of Mau Mau Killings in Colonial Kenya, 1952–56.” In their conversation, Mbunga details how his novel use of the captured documents of Mau Mau guerrillas enabled him to explore the ways that Kikuyu ritual and traditions were deployed and sh
John Aerni-Flessner on border violence amd diplomacy in Southern Africa
In this episode, John Aerni-Flessner (MSU) joins editor Moses Ochonu (Vanderbilt) to discuss the article, "Lesotho and the QwaQwa Ski Resort, 1975–82: Border Disputes and South Africa's Increasingly Deadly Responses," co-authored with Chitja Twala (Limpopo).
John details how a proposed ski resort in QwaQwa served as a site for adjoining Lesotho — despite its economic dependence and comparative mil
Peter Vale on the pre/history of DRC’s neoliberal moment
In this episode, Peter Vale (Harvard) joins editor Marissa Moorman (Wisconsin) to discuss his research on the political economy of early postcolonial Congo. He details how the Mobutu government charted a course between policies and rhetoric extolling economic nationalism, on one hand, and moves to promote financing and investment from abroad, on the other. Vale complicates conventional narratives
Sarah Van Beurden on the work of historians in public debates
In this episode Sarah Van Beurden (OSU and SAR) joins editor Michelle Moyd (MSU) to discuss her History Matters piece, coauthored with Gillian Mathys (Ghent), unpacking the experience of working as historian experts engaged to write a report for a Belgian parliamentary commission tasked with examining the nation’s colonial past.
Van Beurden details both the challenges and opportunities presented b
Sean Hanretta and Ousman Kobo on William A. Brown’s legacy
In this episode, Professors Sean Hanretta and Ousman Kobo join JAH editor Moses Ochonu to discuss the life and work of Professor William A. Brown. While he published little, Bill Brown’s landmark 1968 dissertation on the Caliphate of Hamdullahi, meticulous photographing of Arabic manuscripts in Mali, and decades of teaching and mentoring students at the University of Wisconsin Madison left a profo
Rebecca Grollemund and David Schoenbrun on interpreting Bantu language expansions
In this episode Rebecca Grollemund (Missouri) and David Schoenbrun (Northwestern) join editor Marissa Moorman (Wisconsin) to discuss recent insights and the continuing complexity of classifying five millennia of Bantu language expansions using statistics, computational methods, and other tools.
In the wide-ranging conversation, the authors make a powerful case for the utility of collaborative, mul
Elizabeth Jacob on public motherhood and anticolonial politics in Côte d’Ivoire
In this episode Elizabeth Jacob (Providence) joins editor Moses Ochonu (Vanderbilt) to discuss women's vital role in anticolonial struggles in Côte d'Ivoire and Francophone Africa, through acts both spectacular and mundane. Using the famous 1949 march of two thousand Ivorian women as an entry point, Jacob offers a groundbreaking application of the concept of public motherhood to contextualize the
Etana Dinka on state-society relations within the Ethiopian empire
Etana Dinka (James Madison) joins the JAH's Shane Doyle (Leeds) to discuss state-society encounters in western Ethiopia. Using the province of Qellem as a window, Dinka details processes of contesting, negotiating, and legitimizing the imperial state over a period spanning from 1908 through 1933. Drawing upon his reading of dynamics in Qellem, Dinka argues that the history of Ethiopian imperialism
Laura Phillips on the making of mineral property and political authority in South Africa
Laura Phillips (University of the Witwatersrand) joins JAH editor Marissa Moorman to discuss the entangled histories of minerals, politics, and capital in South Africa. Phillips interrogates the interplay between these forces by focusing on Ga-Mphahlele, a rural community in the northern platinum belt, over a period spanning from the late 19th century through the emergence of majority rule in 1994
Khaled Esseissah on Enslaved Muslim Sufi Saints in the 19th Century Sahara
Khaled Esseissah (Georgetown) speaks with Moses Ochonu about the life of Bilad Ould Mahmud, a 19th century enslaved Saharan Muslim whose renowned miracles, poetry, and Qur’an recitation enabled him to acquire Sufi sainthood without belonging to a Sufi order. Esseissah’s scholarship unsettles longstanding historical narratives about the interplay between spiritual authority, race, and slavery in S
Daniel Domingues da Silva and Edward Alpers on Abolition in 19th Century Mozambique
Daniel Domingues da Silva (Rice) and Edward Alpers (UCLA) join Moses Ochonu to discuss the process of building and interpreting a database of nearly 55,000 enslaved and freed Africans registered by Portuguese colonial authorities in Mozambique between 1856 and 1876. The conversation offers rich insights into the process of abolition, and possibilities for tracing deeper linkages between scholarsh
Sarah Walters on African Historical Demography
How can the methods of historical demography help historians study the African past? Sarah Walters (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) talks to Shane Doyle about how her research uses parish registers in East, Central, and Southern Africa and to shed light on twentieth-century population trends, family formation, and broader societal change.
Her article 'African Population History: Co
Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye on rural radio and infrastructure in Mali
JAH author Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (CNRS, IMAF-Aubervilliers) discusses her recent article on the history of rural radio in Mali with Marissa Moorman. Her article, “Radio and the Road: Infrastructure, Mobility, and Political Change in the Beginnings of Radio Rurale de Kayes (1980–early 2000s)”, appears in the March 2021 issue.
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