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Dr. Miles LarmerBA (Westminster), MA (London), Ph.D. (Sheffield)Senior Lecturer in International History Post 1945 Global History, nineteenth and twentieth century African history
Office Hours: Spring 2012-13 - Thursdays 9.30-11.30am |
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Major Publications
Links
- Centre for the Study of Democratic Culture - History of Political Engagement
Downloads |
Biography
Dr Larmer joined the History Department at Sheffield in September 2008. He was an undergraduate at the University of Westminster and an MA in Africa Studies at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He then worked for a number of aid agencies including Save the Children, travelling widely in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. He returned to higher education in 2000, completing his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2004. He was then a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria, before working at Keele and Sheffield Hallam universities. Membership of Professional Bodies
Research
Current Research Dr Larmer's current research project is a study of the Katangese gendarmes as a way of understanding the social and political history of Central-Southern Africa's 'forty-years war' from 1961 to 1999. This will encompass research on a series of intertwined local, national and transnational conflicts in Zambia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He received support from the British Academy Small Research Grants programme for initial research on this subject and was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Arts & Humanities Research Council for 2011-12. He expects to publish a book, two or three journal articles and two book chapters on this subject in 2012-14. His new research project, ‘Comparing Copperbelts’ to be carried out from 2012-13 onwards, will study the ways in which the two regions of the central African Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia and the former Belgian Congo have has been represented, politically and intellectually, over the past hundred years. Different colonial legacies and academic knowledge production practices have meant that the two ‘Copperbelts’ have generally been studied in isolation. Distinct intellectual traditions developed in relation to the two regions, which have themselves shaped (and been shaped in turn) by popular and political discourses about modernity and development, regional and national identities, notions of class and gender, rural-urban networks and environmental change. Dr Larmer gave a talk on this research to the Oxford Central Africa Forum in June 2012, which you can hear by clicking here.
Research Interests Miles Larmer’s research interests focus on political and social change in southern-central Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. He is interested in the interaction between local social movements, nationalist parties and global forces in shaping post-colonial Africa. His second book, 'Rethinking African Politics: A History of Opposition in Zambia', focuses on opposition movements to Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party; in doing so, it seeks to present an alternative approach to the study of post-colonial political change to the discredited nationalist framework that has hitherto dominated the historiography of sub-Saharan Africa in general. He has also published books on labour history and on the politics of mining in Zambia, as well as an edited collection of the papers of Valentine Musakanya, an important intellectual and political figure in independent Zambia.
Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement Dr Larmer is the co-founder of the Yorkshire African Studies Network, established by Africanists from the universities of Sheffield, Leeds, York and Bradford in 2010 to bring together those interested in Africa from across the county. YASN events are targeted at both academic and non-academic audiences, particularly those from African diaspora communities in Yorkshire. Dr Larmer also works with African community groups in Sheffield to highlight their concerns and strengthen links between them and the academic community.
Research Supervision Miles Larmer welcomes enquiries from potential research students interested in late colonial or post-colonial sub-Saharan African political and social history. Responsibilities
Selected Publications
Books - Mineworkers in Zambia: Labour and Political Change in Post-Colonial Africa, 1964 – 1991 I.B. Tauris (London & New York, 2007). - Rethinking African Politics: A History of Opposition in Zambia Ashgate (Farnham, 2011). - As editor: Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt, co-edited with Alastair Fraser, Palgrave Macmillan (New York NY, 2010). - As editor: The Musakanya Papers: The Autobiographical Writings of Valentine Musakanya, Lembani (Lusaka, 2010).
Special Issues - Editor of special issue of Review of African Political Economy (37, 125), ‘Social Movement Struggles in Africa’.
Articles - ‘Chronicle of a Coup Foretold: Valentine Musakanya and the 1980 Coup Attempt in Zambia’, Journal of African History, 51, 3 (2010), pp. 391-409. - ‘Of Cabbages and King Cobra: Populist Politics and Zambia’s 2006 Elections’, co-written with Alastair Fraser, African Affairs, 106, 425 (2007), pp. 611-637. - ‘The Origins, Context and Political Significance of the Mushala Rebellion against the Zambian One-Party State’, co-written with Giacomo Macola, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 3 (2007), pp. 471-496. - ‘‘The Hour Has Come at the Pit’: The Mineworkers’ Union of Zambia and the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy, 1982 – 1991’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 293-312. - ‘Reaction and Resistance to Neo-liberalism in Zambia’, Review of African Political Economy, 103 (2005), pp. 29-45. |
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