Niels Boender

From October 2024 onwards, I'll be an AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. I'll be working with Professors Emma Hunter and Julia Moses on the Global Socio-Economic Rights, Local Contexts: Work in East Africa and Western Europe, 1880 to the Present” project.

Doctoral Project

Supervised by Professors Daniel Branch and David Anderson, my thesis is entitled: "Coercive Reconciliation, Decolonisation, and the Local Politics of Central Kenya, 1956-1969". Succesfuly examined in May 2024, the work concerns the aftermath of the Mau Mau insurgency in late- and post-colonial Kenya. The thesis takes the latter stages of Britain’s brutal counterinsurgency forward to a revitalised understanding of Kenya’s independence. The focus is post-war reconciliation and the simultaneous creation of Kenya’s post-colonial social contract. Grassroots activism and local politics are foregrounded, whereby radicalised ex-insurgents continued articulating alternative visions of independence. To achieve this, the thesis critiques and employs political science methodologies and takes full advantage of recently released archival documentation and primary testimony of the survivors of Kenya’s abortive anti-colonial struggle.

Education

2020-2024, PhD in History, University of Warwick

2019-2020, MPhil in World History, University of Cambridge (with Distinction)

2016-2019, BA in History, University of York (First Class Honours with Distinction)

Publications

(as editor) Homecoming Veterans in Literature and Culture: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Warwick Series in the Humanities, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024) (Under Contract).
“Kenyan Politics and the Historical Imagination of the Mau Mau Uprising”, in The Cambridge History of African Political Thought, eds. Jon Earle, Emma Hunter, Harry Odamtten, Ayesha Omar, and Nana Osei-Opare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026). (Under Contract).
““The dregs of the Mau Mau barrel”: Permanent Exile and the Remaking of Late Colonial Kenya, 1954-1961,” Journal of Social History (2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad018
“From Federation to ‘White Redoubt’: Africa and the geographical imagination of Rhodesian propaganda, 1962-1970,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2023.2166380
“Mau Mau at the Museum: (Re)narrating colonial insurgency at the IWM,” Journal of Museum Ethnography 36 (March 2023): 110-130.
‘Rotting among the tsetse’, History Today 71, no. 6 (June 2021): 90-93.

Sample of Recent Conference Papers

‘The African Independent Pentecostal Church and the Politics of Kenya's Decolonisation’, (African Studies Association of the UK Conference, Oxford Brookes University, August 2024)
‘Truth or Reconciliation?: Mau Mau and post-colonial state-making in Kenya, 1963-1969’, (Transnational and Global History Annual Conference, University of Oxford, June 2024).
‘Ethnicity, Memory and Reconciliation in a Decolonising State: The Case of Mau Mau in Kenya, 1960-1969’, (Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, April 2024).
‘Resurrecting the African Independent Pentecostal Church: Land, Education and the Local Politics of Kenyan Decolonisation, 1952- 1978’, (African Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, December 2023).
‘Counterinsurgent violence beyond war and independence: the case of Kenya’, (Society for the History of War Annual Conference, Lisbon, November 2023)
‘Uhuru Chiefs and Emergency Headmen: Local politics in postcolonial Central Kenya, 1963-9,’ (Africa: New Perspectives in Social, Political and Economic History Conference, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City, November 2023)
“Neo-Mau Mau’ and ex-loyalists: Oppositional politics in Central Kenya, 1960-69’, (Decolonization’s Discontents Workshop, Harvard University, September 2023)
‘Coercive Reconciliation: Rethinking the Kenya Emergency’, (European Conference on African Studies, Cologne, June 2023).
‘Intra-ethnic electoral competition and the founding of the Kenya African National Union in Central Kenya,1960-1963’, (British Institute in East Africa Annual Conference, Nairobi, February 2023).
‘Heroes and Hooligans: Reframing Mau Mau’s legacies through a reconciliatory lens’, (International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of the British Declaration of State of Emergency in Kenya in 1952, University of Nairobi, October 2022).
‘Kenya and Britain from the 1950s: An entangled decolonisation’, (Lecture for Black History Month, Warwick History Society, October 2022).
‘The local politics of late colonialism: resistance and repression in Central Kenya, 1956-1963’, (Comparing ‘Late Colonialisms’ in Africa Conference, University of Northumbria/University of Coimbra, September 2022).
‘Mau Mau at the Museum: Reviewing the Imperial War Museum’s Kenya Collection’, (Culture, Empire, Things Seminar Series, March 2022).
‘A plethora of potentially subversive activity: Wanjohi Mungau, “neo-Mau Mau” and the local politics of Uhuru in Nyeri, 1959-1965’, (University of Nairobi Department of History Muted Histories Research Seminar, March 2022). Link is available.
‘Grassroots Politics in the Aftermath of the Mau Mau Rebellion’ (Kenyatta University, Department of History Staff Seminar, March 2022).
‘Twilight: Insurgent Nationalism between Emergency and Independence in Kenya, 1959-1960’ (University of Cambridge, World History Workshop, November 2021).
‘Swearing at the forest: Colonial encounters with the Mau Mau’ (Enemy Encounters Conference, Cardiff University/Imperial War Museum, July 2021).
‘A land flowing with milk and honey’: Exile in late-colonial Kenya, 1956-1961’, (History Lab Seminar Series, The Institute of Historical Research, June 2021).
‘The ghosts at the banquet: Kiama Kia Muingi and the legacies of colonial violence in Kenya, 1956-1959’, (History Department Postgraduate Conference, University of Warwick, May 2021).

Teaching

Associate Fellowship (Reference: PR281764) in the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE) was awarded in January 2024 after completing a training course with material reflecting my personal teaching philosophy.
Dissertation Supervisor, 2023-2024, for eight Third-Year undergraduate students at the University of Warwick on subjects related to colonial and post-colonial African History. One of my students won the Felix Dennis Dissertation Prize in Warwick’s History Department for this piece of work.
Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2023-2024, delivering weekly seminar/small-group teaching sessions of How Did We Get to Where We Are Today? A Political History of the Contemporary World (HI2K1) module for second-year history undergraduates at Warwick.
Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2022-2024, delivering a select number of seminar/small-group teaching sessions of Kenya's Mau Mau Rebellion, 1952-60 (HI32B) module for final-year history undergraduates at Warwick.
Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2022-2023, delivering weekly seminar/small-group teaching sessions on Africa and the Cold War (HI 277) module to second-year history undergraduates at Warwick. I also gave lectures for the module. For this teaching, I was nominated and, after a competitive process, highly commended for a ‘Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence’ in the Postgraduate Researcher category.
Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2022-3, delivered seminar/small-group teaching of The Making of the Modern World (HI 153) module to First-Year History Undergraduates at Warwick.

Public Engagement

My PhD was a collaborative project with the Imperial War Museum in London. As part of this project, I am tasked with increasing the presence of African voices in a new global history of Britain’s post-WW2 military history. In this process, I have produced a podcast (Conflict of Interest Season 2, Episode 3), blog posts, and have done a three-month placement in which I catalogued the present Kenya-related holdings. I am currently on the team planning the Unmaking the Empire exhibit as part of the 2025 Empire and Conflict Season, participating since the first brainstorming meetings, and now as a part-time consultant.

Later work has also involved producing an ‘ethical canvass’ on newly digitised photographic material and rewriting public content relating to the Mau Mau insurgency. I have also given well-attended staff seminars on subjects like ‘Imperial Perpetrators and the IWM’ to increase awareness of anti-colonial warfare within the Museum’s remit. An article in the Journal of Museum Ethnography has been a significant product of this engagement with the IWM.

In 2022, I helped in the production of a documentary entitled ‘A Very British Way of Torture’, which used first-hand testimony from Kenyan survivors to represent new findings from the so-called Migrated Archive, files which were illegally removed from British colonies just before independence. I aided with archival research using these files and was interviewed for the documentary. It aired on Channel 4 on the 14^th of August 2022 and Al Jazeera on the 8^th of December 2022 (currently over one million views on YouTube). When spurious legal complaints were made against the program, I aided with additional historical research for the production company and its lawyers. An interview relating to the documentary was also featured in The Guardian. As part of the project, I also participated in a series of public panels discussing the documentary at Oxford and Warwick.

Prizes and Awards

University of Warwick, Vice Chancellor’s International Scholarship, 2021-2024.

Imperial War Museum, Collaborative Doctoral Award, 2020-2024.

Arts and Humanities Research Council & The Library of Congress (Washington DC, USA), International Placement Scheme, 2022-2023.

Cambridge European Scholarship, 2019-2020

Conference Organisation

Principal Organiser (Doctoral Fellow), ‘Homecoming’ after war: Comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives (May 2023). Funded by Humanities Research Centre, University of Warwick.
Panel Convenor, Hist02 “Colonial (counter)insurgency as African future-making”, European Conference on African Studies in Cologne, Germany (May 2023).
Principal Organiser, University of Warwick History Department Postgraduate Conference (May 2022).

Departmental Activities

Convenor, weekly Work-in-Progress sessions for History Department Postgraduates, University of Warwick, 2022-23.
Postgraduate Representative, Departmental Research Committee, University of Warwick History Department, 2021-2022.
Postgraduate Representative, Student-Staff Liaison Committee, University of Warwick History Department, 2019-2020.

Blogs

Please see the following for samples of my writing:

https://nielsboender.com

The International Far-Right and White Supremacy in UDI-era Zimbabwe, 1965-1979: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/blog/the_international_far-right/

‘The Trouble with The English’: Mau Mau’s Place in The Present Debate about Imperial Legacies: https://globalhistory.org.uk/2021/01/the-trouble-with-the-english-mau-maus-place-in-the-present-debate-about-imperial-legacies/

Between Mau Mau and Home Guard: Intertwining Voices from the Mau Mau in IWM’s Archive, https://blogs.iwm.org.uk/research/2020/11/between-mau-mau-and-home-guard-intertwining-voices-mau-mau-uprising-iwms-archive

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/behind-times/rotting-among-tsetse

https://soundcloud.com/niels-boender/podcast-detention-exile-and-counterinsurgency-in-colonial-kenya