Skip to main content
KBS_Icon_questionmark link-ico
King’s People

Biography

I trained as a History and Geography teacher and taught in France, China, Guinea and England. From 2008 to 2012, I undertook a PhD on the history of Borno, Nigeria at the University of Leeds. From January to June 2013, I was a Leverhulme Teaching fellow at the University of Leeds and joined the History Department at King's College London in September 2013. While on research leave in 2017/8, I was a visiting lecturer at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Between 2021 and 2022, I was the director of IFRA-Nigeria at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.

Research interests and PhD supervision

  • African History
  • Archives
  • Borders
  • Borno
  • Cartography
  • Digital History
  • Digital Humanities
  • Nigeria
  • World History

Selected Publications

Teaching

My expertise lies in African History, where I've delivered comprehensive modules spanning Africa since 1700, colonial Algeria, and world history.

I also teach a third-year module on colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, where students analyse the social, economic, and political complexities, including ethnic and religious conflicts like Boko Haram, corruption, military coups, and governance challenges.

Additionally, I've designed a Digital History module exploring the transformative impact of technology on historical study, research, and dissemination.

Expertise and Public Engagement

My doctoral research dealt with Borno, a territory located in North-Eastern mainly known in the media as the cradle of terrorist Islamist group, Boko Haram.

My second monograph analysed the history of this fascinating region through interviews I have conducted myself.

Between 2014 and 2020, I was the editor of a blog called Africa4 for the French newspaper Libération. Our blog reached a wide audience in France but also in many French-speaking countries in Africa.

In 2017, I worked with Dr Toby Green and a team of specialists of African History on a textbook for West African students.

In general, I am very interested in the digitisation of African archives. I received grants from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme to work on digitisation projects in Madagascar and the Republic of Benin. With the help of Dr Geoffrey Browell, Head of Archives Services at King’s College London, I also developed an online catalogue for the National Archives of Madagascar. I was also a member of the board of the Modern Endangered Archives Program at UCLA.

I recently published a trade book on the history of the sea in the Basque Country. This is the basis of a new project on the history of coastal populations in West Africa.

You can visit my website here.

Selected publications

View all publications