The Audrey Richards Annual Lecture in African Studies

After his national service in the King’s African Rifles John Lonsdale read History at the University of Cambridge. With a PhD thesis completed on the colonial history of western Kenya in 1964, his first job was at the University College of Dar es Salaam, teaching history under Terence Ranger. As fellow of Trinity College he taught African history from 1968 to 2004. Publications include essays on the “Scramble for Africa in African history” in the Cambridge History of Africa(1985), on the “Moral Economy of Mau Mau” in his co-authored Unhappy Valley (1992), and on “Anti-colonial nationalism and patriotism in sub-Saharan Africa” in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (2013). Edited and co-edited books include Writing for Kenya: The life and works of Henry Muoria (Brill, 2009), Colonial Kenya Observed (I. B. Tauris, 2015), and From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures (Cambridge, 2019). Work on Jomo Kenyatta’s political thought continues.

The Audrey Richards Annual Lecture in African Studies will be followed by Africa’s Pasts in Africa’s Future, a two day conference honouring John Lonsdale’s work. This will be held in room SG1 in the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, on Friday 22 May and Saturday 23 May 2026. 

Everyone is welcome to attend both the Audrey Richards Lecture on the 21 May, and the conference. Further details will follow in due course.