I am currently at work on a first book project called Migration after Empire: African Diasporas in West Germany. Focusing on migrants from Nigeria, Ghana, and Ethiopia, the book investigates the formation of new African diasporas in postwar West Germany — like in Hamburg, which, by the 1980s, had become home to Europe's second largest Ghanaian community after London and was the birthplace of Burger Highlife, an innovative, genre-bending synthesis of European disco and West African highlife. My book explores a range of themes — from music, food culture, and the arts to feminist literature, student activism, and religious practice. It considers different kinds of mobility and belonging — flight and emigration, immigration and asylum, residency and citizenship, return migration and deportation. And it examines evolving ideas about race, culture, family, and community across successive generations of migrants and citizens.

I have several forthcoming publications and works-in-progress: a book chapter about refugees and antiracism in 1980s West Germany; a book chapter on African migrants and Holocaust memory; and an article, based on my dissertation, about child refugees and international humanitarian aid in 1960s West and Central Africa.

The history of empire and decolonization has been a focal point of my previous scholarship, too. My dissertation at Duke explored German humanitarian and development aid in Africa after 1960. And my master's thesis in Geneva, which won the Prix Arditi, examined settler colonization and racial discourse between German Southwest Africa and East Prussia from the 1880s to the First World War.

My research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Central European History Society, and the German Academic Exchange Service. 

The images below are drawn from my research.