Bio

Education

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh working with the Imperial War Museum on the Legacies of the Mau Mau Conflict in Kenya.

nboender@ed.ac.uk

A bit about me…

I am a scholar of African global history, with a specialisation in the political and intellectual history of East African decolonisation. I am currently part of the AHRC-funded GLOSOC project, with Professor Emma Hunter here at Edinburgh and Dr Julia Moses at Sheffield. We are collectively looking at the global history of socio-economic rights in relation to work in the period after the Second World War. Before coming to Edinburgh I completed my doctorate at the University of Warwick on the legacies of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, especially as it related to the politics of reconcilliation. I am also working with the Imperial War Museum on their Emergency Exits exhibit.

Thesis Project

My PhD project concerned 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 the Kenya’s independence. Post-war reconciliation and the concomitant creation of Kenya’s post-colonial social contract is the focus. Grassroots activism and local politics are foregrounded, whereby radicalised ex-insurgents continued to articulate an alternative vision of independence. To achieve this, the thesis critiques and employs political science methodologies, and takes full advantage of recently released archival documentation, as well as primary testimony of the survivors of Kenya’s abortive anti-colonial struggle. 

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)

Research Interest

Colonial emergencies; Kenyan history; legacies of empire; world history; settler colonialism; global Cold War; public history and museum studies. 

Publications

“The Life and Death of Old-Age Social Security in Late-Colonial Kenya,” Journal of Eastern African Studies (2025), https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2025.2597638.

“‘Blackshirts’ and ‘Blacklists’: The Politics of Late-Colonial Central Kenya, 1958-1963,” Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions (2025), https://doi:10.1017/S0165115325100168

“Resurrecting the African Independent Pentecostal Church: Land, Education, and the Politics of Reconciliation during Kenya’s Decolonisation, 1952-69,” Journal of African History 66:e.12 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853725100558

“‘Neo-Mau Mau’ and ex-Loyalists: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Central Kenya, 1960-69,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 2025, https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-12113508

(as editor) Homecoming Veterans in Literature and Culture: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Warwick Series in the Humanities, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025).

““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.

Presentations

  • “The Kenya Land Freedom Army, Settlement Schemes, and the End of the ‘White Highlands’, 1960-64” (University of Nairobi, Department of History Research Seminar, December 2025).
  • “Culture, Anthropology, and the ‘End-State’ in Britain’s Counterinsurgency Campaign in Kenya, 1952-60”(Society for the History of War Annual Conference, Potsdam, November 2025).
  • “Discourses of Slavery and Freedom and the Struggle for Labour Rights in Post-War East Africa” (French Institute for Research in Africa [IFRA], Series on Slavery, Nairobi, October 2025). 
  • “Paths Not Taken: The Origins of Social Security in East Africa” (British Institute in East Africa, Research and Policy Series, Nairobi, September 2025).
  • “Late-Colonial Labour ‘Stabilisation’ in East Africa: A Social Rights Issue?’ (Writing Global Histories of Socio-Economic Rights Workshop, University of Sheffield, June 2025).
  • “Mau Mau and Human Rights: The Politics of Contemporary Protest” (European Conference on African Studies, Prague, June 2025).
  • “Researching Reconciliation and Repression in 1960s Kenya” (African Studies Seminar, University of Oxford, February 2025).
  • ‘The Politics of “Veterancy” in Post-Colonial Kenya” (Society for the History of War Annual Conference, Nicosia, November-December 2024). 
  • ‘Decolonisation, the Highest Stage of Counterinsurgency? Making the Post-Colonial State in Kenya’ (Institute of Historical Research/Kings College London History of War Seminar, London, October 2024). 
  • ‘The Myth of the Forgotten Fighter: Ex-Mau Mau in the Kenyatta State’ (International Conference on the Mau Mau Movement, University of Nairobi, October 2024).
  • ‘Grassroots Resistance, Resettlement Schemes, and the Making of International Development in Kenya’, (Historical Challenges to International Development Workshop, King’s College London, September 2024).
  • ‘Peacebuilding as a Paradigm for Studying Historical Decolonisation: The Case of Kenya’, (British International History Group Annual Conference, King’s College London, September 2024).
  • ‘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).
  • ‘Rethinking Reconciliation and Development in Southern Africa’, (Past Futures: New Histories from Southern Africa Workshop, Global History @ Warwick Conference, November 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).

Awards and Funding

  • University of Warwick, Vice Chancellor’s International Scholarship, 2021-2024.
  • Imperial War Museum, Collaborative Doctoral Award, 2020-2024.
  • Arts and Humanities Research Council & The John W. Kluge Centre at The Library of Congress (Washington DC, USA), International Placement Scheme, 2023 
  • University of Cambridge, Cambridge Trust European Scholarship, 2019-2020.

Public Engagement

My PhD was a collaborative project with the Imperial War Museum in London. As part of this project, I was 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), written blog posts, and completed a three-month placement in which I catalogued the present Kenya-related holdings. I have helped create the (ongoing) Emergency Exits: The Fight for Independence in Kenya, Malaysia, and Cyprus exhibit as part of the 2025-26 Empire and Conflict Season, participating since the first brainstorming meetings and later as a part-time consultant. A central focus of this work was to amplify the voices of Kenyans themselves in the exhibit, helping the team conduct oral history interviews with Kenyan survivors, which formed a core part of the exhibition. 

Other work has also involved producing an ‘ethical canvas’ 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 and provided an acknowledged model for the Emergency Exits exhibition. 

During 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 Archives, 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 itself. It aired on Channel 4 on the 14th of August 2022. An interview relating to the documentary was also featured in The Guardian.

Blogs

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