Faculty

Moses Ochonu
Assistant Professor of History

PhD, Michigan, 2004

Modern Sub-Saharan Africa; colonialism; postcolonial developments; political economy; African social and economic history.

Telephone: 615-322-3349
Email: Moses.ochonu@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: M 2:00-3:30 pm, by appointment
Office: 127 Benson Hall

Moses Ochonu specializes in the modern history of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on the colonial and postcolonial periods. Although he teaches survey and topical classes on all regions of Africa (and on all periods), his research interest lies in Nigeria. He has published several articles on subjects ranging from the impact of colonial medicine on Northern Nigerians, to the encounters of a German-British adventurer with the Hausa-Fulani people of Northern Nigeria, to the impact of the Great Depression on Nigeria, to a theoretical and empirical examination of the personalization and performance of political power in contemporary Nigeria. His article "The Dilemmas of Explaining Africa" appeared in The Chronicle Review (April 18, 2008). His articles have also appeared in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, African Economic History, and Gefame. His first book is Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigerian in the Great Depression, (University of Ohio Press, October 2009). In addition, he is working on a history of the non-Muslim frontier communities around the Fulani Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria. The project looks at these communities’ complex relationship with the caliphate; the superimposition of British colonialism on a precarious relational status quo, and the gradual and convoluted development of a Middle Belt, non-Muslim consciousness to counter a perceived “Anglo-Fulani” hegemony. This project entitled "History, Politics, and Ethno-Religious Conflicts in the Nigerian Middle Belt," has been awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Grant. The one-year grant was awarded in the 2008 competition and will fund Ochonu's archival and oral research in Niegria and visits to collections in the United Kingdom. Dr. Ochonu has been gathering materials for another project that analyzes the travel narratives of Nigerian travelers to Britain in colonial and postcolonial times and hopes to use these texts to enter the scholarly conversation on the European African diaspora and on the proactive and reactive representations of the metropole in the experiential discourses of colonized peoples. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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