Description:

Faculty & Fellows Colloquium

"The Wisdom of the Peoples" - African Decolonization, Global Governance, and Cold War Constructions of Traditional Medicine

Helen Tilley, History, examines medical, environmental, and human sciences in colonial and post-colonial Africa, emphasizing intersections with environmental history, development studies, and world history. Her book, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge (2011), explores the dynamic interplay between scientific research and imperialism in British Africa between 1870 and 1950. She has also written articles and book chapters on the history of ecology, eugenics, agriculture, and epidemiology in tropical Africa. Her current project focuses on the history of African decolonization, global governance, and the ethnoscientific projects that accompanied post-colonial state building in the Cold War era.