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About Me

I specialise in modern British imperial South African history and my publications include numerous articles and  Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902-10: Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle (Palgrave-Macmillan Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2013).

My research continues to explore migration, settler colonialism and nationhood. I am currently researching the creation of migration systems within South Africa and Australia, and how this connects to modern global systems of migration control. An article on the implementation of border controls, and the important role of border officials, was published in The Conversation (August 2017). A longer academic piece was published in the Journal of Migration History (2018).I have also recently finished articles on the significance of Chinese male hairstyles and the collection of their hair within colonial South Africa for a special edition on Gender and Empire in the Journal of World History, and a critique of the British World with Andrew Dilley in The Historical Journal.

I have been a Lecturer in Modern History at Keele University since 2011. I earned my PhD from King’s College, London before securing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia, and lecturing at the London School of Economics and Goldsmith’s College, London. I am also a committee member of the Social History Society, co-convene their Deviance: Inclusion and Exclusion strand, and jointly prepared the winning bid to host the SHC at Keele in 2018. I sit on the national History UK Steering Committee (and was Media Officer in 2014-15). I am currently the Director of the MA and MRes in History at Keele.

Recent Publications

Popular
‘Beware the border patrol: the nasty history of airport discrimination’, The Conversation, 14 August 2017

Academic
Article: ‘”A great deal of discrimination is necessary in administering the law”: Frontier Guards and Migration Control in early twentieth century South Africa’, Journal of Migration History (2018)

Article: ‘Mastering the Queue: scalping in South Africa and the Chinese “other”’, Journal of World History, special edition: Gender and Empire (2017)

Article: ‘After the British World’, co-written with Andrew Dilley (Aberdeen) The Historical Journal, 60:2, 547-568 (2017)

Book: Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902-10: Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle (Cambridge Imperial and Postcolonial Studies Series, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013). ISBN: 978-1-137-
31657-8

Chapter: ‘Asian Migration and the British World, 1850-1914’, in Andrew S. Thompson and Kent Fedorowich (eds.), Empire, Identity and Migration in the British World (Manchester
University Press, 2013). IBSN: 978-0-7190-8956-5

Media Coverage

Social Media

@RBrightHistory

Country Focus

South Africa, Australia, United Kingdom

Expertise by Geography

Africa, Australia, England, Pacific, United Kingdom

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, Modern, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Capitalism, Colonialism, Disability, Gender, Government, Law, Migration & Immigration, Politics, Race, Women, World War I