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Professor Daniel Branch

Professor in African History
Academic Director of Doctoral College
Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor, Africa

Please email me directly if you would like to make an appointment.

Academic career

I have been at Warwick since 2008. Between 2014 and 2019 I was head of department in History. I was also acting chair of the Faculty of Arts for a short period in 2019. I have been Academic Director of the Doctoral College since 2021. Over the same period, I have also been Academic Director for Africa - now Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor - within the university's International Executive. The latter role is shared with Professor Franklyn Lisk.

Before coming to Warwick, I had a post in History at the University of Exeter and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Program on Order, Conflict and Violence at Yale University. I studied at Sussex University and SOAS before completing my DPhil at Oxford.

Research interests

My main interests are in the colonial and post-colonial history of Kenya. I have recently worked with Emma Hunter (Edinburgh), Ismay Milford (Edinburgh), and Gerard McCann (York) on a joint Leverhulme-funded project on East Africa's global 1960s. I am currently writing a monograph on Tom Mboya and the global politics of Kenya's decolonisation.

My first book was a study of loyalism during the Mau Mau rebellion in late-colonial Kenya and my second a narrative of post-colonial politics up to the present. These two projects have led to other interests in contemporary Kenyan politics and counterinsurgency.

I am happy to supervise PhD researchers interested in working on these or related subjects.