Author Archives: nielsboender

Please give my most recent journal article, in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, a read! The output of our “Global Socio-Economic Rights, Local Contexts” project and a talk I gave at the British Institute in Eastern Africa back in September. The paper describes how late-colonial Kenya saw intense debates over social security, as theContinue reading “Research Article: The life and death of old-age social security in late-colonial Kenya”

Very excited to announce the publication of my latest article – the last in a trilogy about local politics in Nyeri District in the years surrounding Kenyan independence. I’m very grateful to Itinerario, and especially Drs Tim Livsey and Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo for putting together this Special Edition re-evaluating the notion of “late-colonialism”. The articleContinue reading “Research Article: “Blackshirts” and “Blacklists”: The Politics of Late-Colonial Central Kenya, 1958–1963”

Very happy to see my latest article published with the Journal of African History, the second in what will be a trilogy of articles on the legacy of Mau Mau and local politics in Central Kenya. In this article, I take a look at the African Independent Pentecostal Church, the religious arm and an inheritorContinue reading “Research Article: Resurrecting the African Independent Pentecostal Church: Land, Education, and the Politics of Reconciliation during Kenya’s Decolonisation, 1952–69”

I am thrilled to say that my most recent research article has been released in Advance Publication. This time, it appears in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, on the politics of chieftaincy in the wake of Mau Mau in Central Kenya. It was a great pleasure to be part ofContinue reading “Research Article: Neo–Mau Mau and Ex-Loyalists: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Central Kenya, 1960–69”

I am thrilled to announce the release of an edited collection I have been working on for the last couple of years! Together with eight others who contributed brilliant chapters, we’ve produced a book that speaks to the return of soldiers to their home environments – using ‘homecoming’ as a crucial analytical lense. Available inContinue reading “Homecoming Collection Released!”

I’ve spent the last couple of months getting fully stuck in to our new AHRC-funded GLOSOC project, for which I’m based at the University of Edinburgh. Take a look at our new website: https://www.glosoc.org and especially the blog. I’ve just written one on the diversity of social rights across time and space in Africa –Continue reading “New GLOSOC Site and Blog”

I’ve was very glad to be able to contribute a blog to the Museum of British Colonialism’s series on anti-blackness and colonial detention. It is a more public-friendly take on some of the topics I broached in my recent article with the Journal of Social History – please give it a read!

Very excited to see the publication of my latest article, with the Journal of Social History. It examines the practice of exile in 1950s Kenya, as thousands of Mau Mau suspects were despatched to the far-flung corners of the Colony. It places these practices into a theories of legal exception and a history of exileContinue reading ““The Dregs of the Mau Mau Barrel”: Permanent Exile and the Remaking of Late Colonial Kenya, 1954–61 “

Very happy to have been published in the specialist Journal of Museum Ethnography, with an article on the Mau Mau collections held at the Imperial War Museum. It represents the culmination of a lot of my work with the Museum over the past 2.5 years. Give it a read on my Academia page! https://www.academia.edu/101056449/Mau_Mau_at_the_Museum_Re_narrating_Colonial_Insurgency_at_the_Imperial_War_Museum

I’m very happy to have been published in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, with an article on Rhodesia’s UDI, far-right entanglements, and the Global Cold War. Give it a read here! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2023.2166380