Professor Stacey Hynd
BA, MSt, D.Phil (Oxon)
Professor of African and Global History
4323
01392 724323
Overview
My primary research interests are in conflict and humanitarianism in Africa. I am working on a history of child soldiering that traces historical patterns in the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict across Africa, and also analyzes the evolution of humanitarian campaigning and transnational advocacy against children's involvement in conflict in 1970s to the present. I am interested more widely in African gender histories, histories of youth and childhood, violence and warfare in Africa, anti-landmine campaigning, and in global histories of humanitarianism and human rights. My other research interests are in the history of law, violence and punishment in Africa, particularly on the death penalty in British colonial Africa. I teach on African twentieth century political and socio-cultural histories, civil wars, and child solidering.
I am Co-Director of the Centre for Imperial and Global History and a member of the Centre for War, State and Society.
Research
My main research project is on 'Children at War: A History of Child Soldiering in Africa, c.1890-2015', funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme. The project traces historical patterns in the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict across Africa, and also analyzes the evolution of humanitarian campaigning and transnational advocacy against children's involvement in conflict in 1970s to the present. I am interested more widely in African gender histories, histories of youth and childhood, violence and warfare in Africa, anti-landmine campaigning, and in global histories of humanitarianism and human rights.
My other research interests are in the history of law, violence and punishment in Africa, particularly during the colonial period. My doctoral research focused on the use of the death penalty in Britain’s African colonies, using this to explore the nature of colonial rule, and attitudes to murder and criminality. I am currently working on revising my thesis, ‘Imperial Gallows: Capital Punishment, Violence and Colonial Rule in Britain’s African Territories, c.1908-68’ for publication. I have conducted archival research in Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Tanzania and Jamaica. I have published on murder and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, gendered violence, prison systems, forced labour, and juvenile delinquency in British colonial Africa. I am also working on a study of human rights and truth and reconciliation in Ghana.
Research collaborations
I am part of the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy with the University of Mainz and the International Committee of the Red Cross: http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de/. I am also a member of the Leverhulme-funded 'Understanding Insurgencies' research network across Exeter, Oxford, Warwick, Glasgow, CNRS Paris, Quebec, and KITLV Leiden. http://understandinginsurgencies.exeter.ac.uk/
Supervision
I am the College of Humanities Director of Postgraduate Research. I am a very keen PhD supervisor and am happy to supervise students in the fields of African history and imperial/global history, and in particular those with an interest in the following areas:
- histories of colonial law
- crime and punishment
- death penalty
- violence
- conflict and warfare
- transitional justice and post-conflict reconciliation
- human rights
- histories of global humanitarianism
- gender
- childhood and youth
- human-animal relations
I also coordinate the College of Humanities PGR Career Development and Training Workshops.
I have acted as an external PhD examiner in African Studies for SOAS and Birmingham.
Research students
I am currently supervising the following doctoral candidates:
- Beth Rebisz (History, AHRC SWW DTP) on women and humanitarian interventions in the Mau Mau Emergency, Kenya, 1952-59.
- Diana Valencia Duarte (History, Exeter Global Excellence scholar) on food in/security and environmental history in Colombia c.1960-90
- Marlen von Reith (History) on British and German discourses on child soldiering
- Polly Winfield (Anthropology, ESRC SW DTP) on museum engagement and transitional justice in South Africa
- Robin Fiore (Anthrozoology) on human-wildlife conflict in Kenya
- Betsy Lewis-Holmes (History) on health, fitness and exercise for girls in Victorian England
- Yuan Wang (Anthrozoology, China Scholarship Council) on human-animal relations in safari tourism in Kenya
- Francesca Baldwin (AHRC SWW DTP, History, Reading) on women in Eritrean conflict
- Liang Wan (Wellcome 'Connecting Three Worlds' grant, History) on accupuncture and the globalization of Chinese socialist medicine
- Shibani Das (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, History) on decolonizing telecommunications in the British empire
My completed PhD students are:
- Rhian Keyse (History, AHRC) - on forced/early marriage in British colonial Africa, c. 1920-50s. Recently awarded 3yr postdoctoral fellowship on Prof Joanna Bourke's Wellcome-funded project on medico-legal responses to sexual violence.
- Emily Bridger (History, Exeter International Scholarship) on female youth in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Now a UKRI Future Leader fellow and Senior Lecturer in History at Exeter
- Temilola Alanamu (History, Exeter International Scholarship) - gendered lifecycles in nineteenth-century Abeokuta, Nigeria. Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University of Kent
- Elizabeth Laruni (History, Exeter Home/EU Scholarship) - political mobilization of Acholi identity in Northern Uganda, 1960-85. NORHED postdoctoral scholar at Makerere University, Uganda. Now Peacebuilding Adviser on Gender at International Alert.
- Gareth Curless (History, ESRC) - political economies of labour and violence in Sudan. Now an ESRC Future Leader fellow and Senior Lecturer in History at Exeter
- Stuart Mole - the Commonwealth and Apartheid South Africa.
- Charlotte Kelsted (History, AHRC SWW DTP) on British women and intimate colonialisms in mandate Palestine
Publications
Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.
| To Appear | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2008 | 2007 |
To Appear
- Hynd S. Kenya: A Country in the Making, 1880-1940. By Nigel Pavitt, History: A Journal of the Historical Association.
2023
- Hynd S. (2023) Imperial Gallows Murder, Violence and the Death Penalty in British Colonial Africa, c.1915-60, Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Hynd S. (2023) ‘More an Inspiration than a Deterrent’? Capital Punishment and British Colonial Counter-Insurgency, c. 1916–1973, The Oxford Handbook of Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, Oxford University Press (OUP), 214-231, DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198866787.013.18.
- Hynd S. (2023) Clare Anderson. Convicts: A Global History, The American Historical Review, volume 128, no. 3, pages 1535-1506, DOI:10.1093/ahr/rhad340.
- Fiore R. (2023) The Gnu Normal: Interactions Between Wildebeest, Maasai, and Conservation in Kenya.
2022
- Valencia Duarte D. (2022) The Peasant Food Question: Agrarian Reforms, Depeasantisation and Food Sovereignty in Dispute, Colombia, 1961-2013.
- Braatz E, Bruce-Lockhart K, Hynd S. (2022) Introduction: African penal histories in global perspective, PUNISHMENT & SOCIETY-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PENOLOGY, volume 24, no. 5, pages 759-770, article no. ARTN 14624745221109542, DOI:10.1177/14624745221109542. [PDF]
- Reeves J. (2022) The Freedom Theatre/Bus: The Challenges of Narrative-Formation in Palestine.
2021
- Hynd S. (2021) Constructing the Child Soldier Crisis: Violence, Victimhood, and the Development of Transnational Advocacy against the Recruitment and Use of Children in Conflict, circa 1970-2000, HUMANITY-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS HUMANITARIANISM AND DEVELOPMENT, volume 12, no. 3, pages 265-285, DOI:10.1353/hum.2021.0027. [PDF]
- Kelsted C. (2021) Multiple Intimate Colonialisms: British Women and the Population of Mandate Palestine (1920-1948).
- Lewis-Holmes B. (2021) ‘Health is the first consideration for effective study’ : physical training, health education and girlhood at schools and colleges in Britain 1870-1910s.
2020
- Mole S. (2020) The Commonwealth, South Africa and Apartheid.
- Hynd S. (2020) In/visible Girls: ‘Girl Soldiers’, Gender and Humanitarianism in African Conflicts, c.1955-2005, Gendering Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation, Palgrave Macmillan, 255-280.
- Hynd S. (2020) Small Warriors? Children and Youth in Colonial Insurgencies and Counterinsurgency, ca. 1945–1960, Comparative Studies in Society and History: an international quarterly, volume 62.4, pages 684-713, DOI:10.1017/S0010417520000250. [PDF]
2019
- Keyse R. (2019) Imperial, International, and Local Responses to Early and Forced Marriage in British Colonial Africa, c.1920-1962.
2018
- Hynd S. (2018) Future Directions in African Crime and Criminal Justice History, Crime Histoire et Sociétés, no. Vol. 21, n°2, pages 205-218, DOI:10.4000/chs.1888.
- Hynd S. (2018) Pickpockets, Pilot Boys and Prostitutes: The Construction of Juvenile Delinquency in the Gold Coast [Colonial Ghana], 1929-57, Journal of West African History, volume 4: 2, pages 47-74, DOI:10.14321/jwestafrihist.4.2.0047.
- Hynd S. (2018) I wasn't a boy, I was a soldier: Militarization and Civilianization in Narratives of Child Soldiers in Africa's Contemporary Conflicts, c.1990-2010', The Civilianization of War: The Changing Civil-Military Divide, 1914-2014, Cambridge University Press, 141-162, DOI:10.1017/9781108643542.008.
2015
- Hynd S. (2015) Dismembering and Remembering the Body: Execution and Post-Execution Display in Africa, c. 1870–2000, A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse, Springer Nature, 220-248, DOI:10.1057/9781137444011_9.
- Hynd S. (2015) Decorum or Deterrence?, Cultural and Social History, volume 5, no. 4, pages 437-448, DOI:10.2752/147800408x341640.
- Curless G, Hynd S, Alanamu T, Roscoe K. (2015) Editors’ introduction: Networks in imperial history, Journal of World History, volume 26, no. 4, pages 705-732, DOI:10.1353/jwh.2016.0048.
- Hynd S. (2015) ‘R. v. Mrs Utam Singh: Race, Gender and Deviance in a Kenyan Murder Case, 1949-51’, Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World, Palgrave Macmillan, 226-244.
- hynd S. (2015) Dismembering and Remembering the Body: Execution and Post-Execution Display in Africa, c.1870-2000, A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse, Palgrave Macmillan, 220-248, DOI:10.1057/9781137444011.
- Hynd S. (2015) ‘“…A Weapon of Immense Value”: Convict Labour in British Colonial Africa, c.1850-1950s’, Global Convict Labour, Brill, 249-272, DOI:10.1163/9789004285026_011.
2014
- Hynd S. (2014) ‘Insufficiently cruel' or ‘simply inefficient’?: Discipline, punishment and reform in the Gold Coast prison system, c. 1850–1957, Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance, Routledge, 19-35, DOI:10.4324/9781315815312-3. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2014) Benjamin Knowles v. R.: judging murder, race and respectability from colonial Ghana to the Judicial Commitee of the Privy Council, 1928-30, Legal Histories of the British Empire: Laws, Engagements and Legacies, Routledge, 77-91.
2013
- Hynd S. (2013) Warfare in African history, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, volume 89, no. 1, pages 227-228. [PDF]
2012
- Hynd S. (2012) Murder and Mercy: Capital Punishment in Colonial Kenya, ca. 1909-1956, International Journal of African Historical Studies, volume 45, no. 1, pages 81-101. [PDF]
2011
- Hynd S. (2011) Law, violence and penal reform: State responses to crime and disorder in colonial Malawi, c.1900-1959, Journal of Southern African Studies, volume 37, no. 3, pages 431-447, DOI:10.1080/03057070.2011.602884.
- Hynd S. (2011) ‘Law, Violence and Penal Reform: State Responses to Crime and Disorder in Nyasaland, c.1915-64’,, Journal of Southern African Studies, volume 37, no. 1, pages 431-447. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2011) 'Law and Justice and the Colonial Order on the Gold Coast: The Role of Colonial Judges, 1858-57', Judging the Empire: Judicial Authorities and Legal Systems in the British Empire, University Of Oxford, edited volume - tbc.
2010
- Hynd S. (2010) Africa 1957-89; The Horn of Africa Since 1989; The Democratic Republic of Congo: Conflict and Crisis; African Democratization since 1989, The Times Complete History of the World, Times Books, 318-325.
- Hynd S. (2010) Murder and the Social Body: The Rule of Law, Judicial Violence and Colonial Control on the Gold Coast, c.1858-1947, Empire: Legality, Locality, Authority, University Of Plymouth.
- Hynd S. (2010) 'Subject to Death: Capital Punishment, Intra-African Murder and the Colonial State in British Africa , c.1900-40, Votare con i piedi: amminstrazione coloniale, borderlands e mobilita delgi individui nell'Africa coloniale italiana, Universita Degle Studi Di Macerata, 14th - 15th Oct 2010.
- Hynd S. (2010) ‘From “Pickpockets” to “Pilot Boys”: Juvenile Delinquency on the Gold Coast, 1920-57’, African Studies Association United Kingdom Conference, University Of Oxford, St Anthony's College, 16th - 19th Sep 2010.
- Hynd S. (2010) "The extreme penalty of the law": Mercy and the death penalty as aspects of state power in colonial Nyasaland, c. 1903-47, Journal of Eastern African Studies, volume 4, no. 3, pages 542-559, DOI:10.1080/17531055.2010.517422.
- Hynd S. (2010) Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography, HISTORY, volume 95, no. 319, pages 357-357, DOI:10.1111/j.1468-229X.2010.00490_4.x. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2010) A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present, HISTORY, volume 95, no. 319, pages 356-356, DOI:10.1111/j.1468-229X.2010.00490_3.x. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2010) The African Diaspora: A History through Culture, HISTORY, volume 95, no. 319, pages 355-356, DOI:10.1111/j.1468-229X.2010.00490_2.x. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2010) A History of Sub-Saharan Africa, HISTORY, volume 95, no. 319, pages 354-355, DOI:10.1111/j.1468-229X.2010.00490_1.x. [PDF]
- Hynd S. (2010) ‘The Extreme Penalty of the Law’: Capital Punishment as an Aspect of State Power in Colonial Nyasaland, c.1900-47, Journal of Eastern African Studies, volume 4, no. 3, pages 542-559.
- Hynd S. (2010) Fatal Families: Narratives of Spousal Killing and Domestic Violence in Murder Trials in Kenya and Nyasaland, c.1930-56, Domestic Violence and the Law in Africa, Ohio University Press, 159-178.
2008
- Hynd S. (2008) Killing the condemned: The practice and process of capital punishment in british africa, 1900-1950s, Journal of African History, volume 49, no. 3, pages 403-418, DOI:10.1017/S0021853708003988.
- Hynd S. (2008) Decorum or Deterrence? The Politics of Execution in Malawi, 1915-1966, Cultural and Social History, volume 5, no. 4, pages 437-448.
2007
- Hynd S. (2007) Deadlier than the Male?: Women and the Death Penalty in Colonial Kenya and Nyasaland, Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies, volume 12, pages 13-33.
External impact and engagement
Contribution to discipline
I am a two-term Council member of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom
Teaching
I teach broadly across the field of modern African history, with a strong interdisciplinary focus, drawing perspectives from anthropology, politics, law, and development studies. My teaching is strongly informed by my research, with a focus on gender and youth histories, as well as issues related to conflict, humanitarianism and human rights, and I work with my students to historize and stage critical discussions and debates on contemporary issues ranging from war crimes and development aid to gender and sexual based violence, to political corruption and HIV/AIDS . I have recently been a runner up in the Student Guild Research Inspired Teaching Award.
Modules taught
- HIH2001 - Doing History: Perspectives on Sources
- HIH3005 - General Third-Year Dissertation
- HIH3208 - Child Soldiers - War, Society and Humanitarianism in Africa: Sources
- HIH3628 - Civil Wars
Biography
I grew up in Scotland, Bulgaria, Russia and Tanzania. I read for a BA in Modern History at the University of Oxford, before going on to complete an MSt in Imperial and Commonwealth History at the same institution in 2003, where I wrote my dissertation on the Tanganyikan penal system, c.1920-45. After a year spent living in Egypt and Jamaica, I returned to Oxford where I completed my DPhil. in Modern History at St Cross College in 2008, where I was an AHRC Doctoral Scholarship holder and Beit Research Scholar. My doctorate was written on the subject of capital punishment in British colonial Africa. I spent a year lecturing in African and World History at the University of Cambridge, where I was a Fellow of Wolfson College, before arriving at Exeter in September 2008.
More information
Member of African Studies Association
Senior Member, Wolfson College Cambridge