Biography
Dr Elijah Doro is an environmental historian and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He completed his PhD in History at Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2020. He is a former Humboldt fellow and has conducted extensive research in African environmental history focussing on toxicities, extraction and the slow violence of settler colonialism on human bodies and landscapes.
Dr Doro is author of Plunder for Profit: A Socioenvironmental of Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. He contributes to teaching and supervision in the department and is convenor for two modules: Biomedicine, Global Health and Society and Research Practice and Design Studio.
Research
- Colonial medicine
- Toxicities, poisons and environmental pollution
- Mining and chronic diseases in colonial Africa
Dr Doro's research interests are on the entanglement of extraction, human bodies and the environment in colonial Africa and the implications for the post colony. His work is founded on postcolonial theory and emphasises the imperative for ‘urgent histories’ that connect Africa’s historical experiences within the objective needs of the present.
Dr Doro's broader research project is on investigating the ‘chemical violence’ of colonial encounters in Africa and how it shapes contemporary vulnerabilities. His research explores innovative ways of using the archive to illuminate on the slow violence of settler colonialism and challenges hegemonic discourses that extirpate the agency and visibility of African experiences. He is currently working on the medical histories and toxic legacies of gold mining in southern Africa focusing on arsenic.
Further details
Research
Spatialities and Networks of Cancer
The Spatialities and Networks of Cancer research cluster examines historically and ethnographically practices that spatialize cancer. Working across the North and the South, our research pays particular attention to South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Culture, Medicine & Power research group
The interdisciplinary study of social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of health and illness.
Research
Spatialities and Networks of Cancer
The Spatialities and Networks of Cancer research cluster examines historically and ethnographically practices that spatialize cancer. Working across the North and the South, our research pays particular attention to South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Culture, Medicine & Power research group
The interdisciplinary study of social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of health and illness.