Participant Info

First Name
Hilary
Last Name
Lynd
Country
United States
State
CA California
Affiliation
University of California, Berkeley
Website URL
https://history.berkeley.edu/hilary-lynd
Keywords
social history of ideas, transnational exchange, empire, decolonization, socialism, race, nation, ethnicity, white supremacy, area studies
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a historian of Eurasia and Africa at UC Berkeley. Focusing on the former Soviet Union and South Africa, my work explores the social history of ideas about race and ethnicity. I have published articles on Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union as well as the land deal that secured Zulu nationalists’ participation in South Africa’s first democratic elections. My dissertation project compares and connects the histories of difference in both places, centering the perspectives of Soviet and South African citizens who engaged one another as they moved back and forth.

My interests include empire and decolonization, ideologies of difference, area studies, the international circulation of people and ideas, and the many lives and afterlives of global  communism.

Recent Publications

Scholarly Publications

“Histories of Color: Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union,” with Thom Loyd, Slavic Review 81:2 (2022).

“The Peace Deal: The Formation of the Ingonyama Trust and the IFP Decision to Join South Africa’s 1994 Elections,” South African Historical Journal 73:2 (May 2021).

Public Writing

“Melancholy’s the Word: On C.A. Davids’ How to Be a Revolutionary,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 25 September 2022.

“The Politics of Imperial Gratitude,” Africa is a Country, 14 March 2022.

“ANC is enthralled with idea of repaying a historical debt,” Business Day, 7 March 2022.

“Secret details of the land deal that brought the IFP into the 94 poll,” Mail & Guardian, 7 August 2019.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
South Africa, Soviet Union, Russia
Expertise by Geography
Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Capitalism, Colonialism, Diplomacy, Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Politics, Race, Rebellion & Revolution