Chao Maina

My research investigates the spatial dimensions and enduring imprints of mass detention during Kenya's State of Emergency (1952-1960). Following independence, detention sites set up to hold Mau Mau suspects took on different afterlives, some were quietly left to decay while others were turned into schools, prisons, and absorbed into Kenya’s post-independence landscape. These infrastructures of incarceration stripped of their documentary traces through archival destruction, never simply disappeared. Creating a landscape where Kenyans live, work, and study in spaces of historical trauma that remain unnamed and unmarked.

I argue that understanding the broader geographies of detention is crucial to expanding historiographic gaps on the Emergency that arise due to archival destruction and political suppression. Where sites were located, the rationale behind their positioning, what traces they left behind and how they are inhabited today, contributes to a more nuanced historical understanding while revealing the enduring imprint of colonial violence on Kenya’s contemporary social and physical landscapes. To engage with this subject, I employ an integrated methodology that combines archival analysis, spatial analysis, oral history and ground-sourcing.

I draw on multiple disciplines, including colonial and post-colonial studies, human geography, memory studies and digital humanities in order to address and analyse the complex historical, spatial and social dimensions of detention. In addition to engaging with the history of detention , my work also foregrounds the contemporary complexities of life around and within detention sites. Paying close to attention to the intricate geographies of memory that reveal how Kenyans engage with sites marked by violence and erasure.

Academic Background