Dr Hannah Whittaker
Senior Lecturer in Modern African History
Marie Jahoda 225
- Email: hannah.whittaker@brunel.ac.uk
- Tel: +44 (0)1895 267174
- Politics
- Politics and History
- Social and Political Sciences
- College of Arts, Law and Social Sciences
Research area(s)
- African history
- Kenya and Somalia
- Colonialism and decolonization
- Development
- Borders and frontiers
Research Interests
My research is organized around several interrelated themes that bridge the colonial and post-independence eras in Northeast Africa:
1. State violence and the 'shifta' conflict in Kenya: A major part of my research focuses on the Shifta conflict (1963–1968) in Kenya. I move away from purely nationalist interpretations of the war to explore its socioeconomic dynamics, showing how it combined a liberation struggle with local-level resource competition. I have documented the enduring legacy of forced villagization—whereby the state effectively criminalized pastoralism and created a cycle of impoverishment that continues to inform northern Kenyans' sense of community victimization.
2. Securitized development: I examine how development has frequently served as a mechanism for security and state control rather than purely for social welfare. My work on the Dixey water and grazing scheme in northern Kenya demonstrates how colonial officials used environmental conservation as a pretext for anchoring nomadic populations and monitoring borders. This research highlights the continuities in how modern states still attempt to broadcast power through infrastructure in 'ungoverned spaces'.
3. Youth and politics: I am interested in how the state constructs problematic identities, focusing specifically on Somali youth in Kenya. My research traces the historical roots of the 'spectre of radicalization' arguing that current typecasting of young Somali males as security threats is a direct continuation of colonial -era ethnic profiling that dismissed legitimate political grievances as 'banditry'.
I have also researched the role of education in state-building, exemplified by my study of Rumbek Secondary School in South Sudan. I examine how schoolboy peer cultures and education-related migration contributed to a distinct southern Sudanese political consciousness that eventually challenged northern domination and the configuration of the state.
4. Urban Somali history: Beyond the frontier, I have researched the long-term presence of Somalis in urban centres like Nairobi. My work uncovers a genealogy of residence dating back to 1915, showing how urban Somalis have used the law to negotiate their rights to tenure and settlement in the face of colonial atempts to relocate them to 'nomadic camps'.
New Projects:
1. Statue wars and the afterlives of imperial monuments: My recent collaborative research extends into the politics of memorialisation and the global statue wars that have erupted since 2020. This project explores how monuments are not fixed in stone but are constantly reinterpreted, toppled, or repurposed to serve contemporary political agendas. The focus for this research is the Lendy brothers—Charles and Edward—whose memorials across the UK, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe became unlikely flashpoints in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. This work uncovers a stark disconnect between historical reality and modern myth-making.
2. The silent history of the Somali Youth League (SYL) in Kenya: I am currently developing a new project exploring the clandestine history of the Somali Youth League (SYL) in Kenya. While often framed as a pan-Somali nationalist party based in Mogadishu, the SYL in Kenya operated as a vital, and often suppressed, movement for borderland rights. This project draws on the broader history of clandestine movements in colonial Africa to understand how the legacy of SYL resistance informs contemporary politics in the Horn of Africa.
Research grants and projects
Grants
Funder: British Academy/Leverhulme
Duration: December 2015 - November 2016
Recent research on development in Africa has established that development projects do not normally achieve what they set out to do. Although there are existing studies that address these questions, most have focused on specific development projects at specific times. This grant is sought to support extensive archival and oral historical research on colonial and postcolonial development in northern Kenya, in order to understand the impact that development projects do have over the long term. This will enable me to write a systematic account of the changing relationship between development and the expression of state power over the colonial and postcolonial periods, as well as examine how development has been appropriated at the local level, especially in relation to resource conflict.
Project details
Current projects:
Completed:
Development on the Margins: Histories of Inclusion and Exclusion in Kenya, 1930-present. British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant (2015-2016), £7,322
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya: A Social History of the Shifta Conflict, c. 1963-8 (2015)
AHRC The socioeconomic dynamics of the Shifta conflict in Kenya, c. 1963-8 (2007-2010), £45,000