Saturday 23 May 2026 9:00am to 4:00pm
Alison Richard Building SG1
7, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DPThis conference will draw together leading scholars and students of African history to discuss the major themes pursued by the distinguished Cambridge historian John Lonsdale. The conference is free to attend and open to all. Pre-registration is not required.
About
Programme
The study of political accountability has never been more urgent, for increasingly authoritarian states in Africa (and in the global North) are closing down space for protest. What resources can history furnish to contemporary political activists in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa?
Saturday 23 May 2026
09:00 Panel III: The Longer History of Mau Mau
H. Muoki Mbunga, ‘In Defence of Komerera: a revisionist account of the scapegoat in Mau Mau histories’
Julie MacArthur, ‘“In the Forest, There was No Husband or Wife”: Remaking Community, Gender, and Moral Economies in the Kenya Land Freedom Army’
Dave Anderson, ‘Before and After Hola: the deeper history of a colonial massacre, 1957-1969’
Niels Boender, ‘Moral Ethnicity after Mau Mau: Reconciliation and Local Politics in Kenyatta’s Kenya’
Discussant: Derek Peterson (and Luise White, in absentia)
10:45 Break (soft drinks will be provided, hot drinks may be purchased from Florey at Harvey Court)
11:15 Panel IV: Infrastructures
Paul Ocobock, ‘Coffee Root Rot: Debt and Development in Depression-Era Kenya’
Florence Brisset-Foucault, ‘Lonsdale and the State: the construction and the formation of the State through the study of village identity papers in Uganda’
George Roberts, ‘Financialisation and the making of Kenya’s contemporary political economy, 1973–2000’
Discussant: Preben Kaarsholm
1:15 Lunch
2:30 Panel V: History and Politics in Kenya
Inge Brinkman, ‘Gikuyu Ng’ano and the Making of National Culture: storytelling in Kenya’s post-colonial politics and education, 1960s-1990s
Kate Luongo, ‘Lawyering Against Injustice: legal mobilization in late twentieth-century Kenya’
Paul Njoroge Muiru, ‘Taking God Too Far? Kikuyu religious thought and the June 2024 GenZ protests in Kenya’
Prince Guma, ‘Resisting Closure: subaltern politics, logics, and legacies of Kenya’s GenZ protests’
Discussant: Fred Cooper
Contact
Victoria Jones