 Benjamin Lawrance
Assistant Professor
E: bnl@ucdavis.edu
T: 530-752-8207
O: 4208 SSH
| Academic Biography | | Benjamin N. Lawrance grew up in Australia and the U.K. He studied Ancient European history at London University, and African history at Stanford University under the guidance of Richard Roberts. His recent book, (Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation’: Periurban Colonialism in Togo’s Eweland, 1900-1960) explores the social antecedents to the nationalism of the Ewe-speaking peoples of British and French-mandated Togoland.
His research interests include West Africa, the African slave trade, comparative and contemporary slavery, child trafficking, and human rights violations, asylum and immigration and other social justice issues, Pan-Africanism, health, borderlands studies, oral history and methodologies of orality.
He has edited two volumes; the first with Richard Roberts and Emily Osborn on the role of intermediaries in the construction of African colonial law entitled Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa; and the second entitled The Ewe of Togo and Benin.
Professor Lawrance is a legal consultant on the contemporary political climate in Togo, Ghana and Benin. He regularly serves as an expert witness for law firms representing asylum-seekers in US, UK, Canadian and European courts. In his spare time, he enjoys skiing, cycling, hiking, travel, scrabble, opera and building water boreholes in rural villages in Togo, Ghana and Benin. If you are interested in supporting these development projects, please contact him by email. |
|
| Research Interests | | Colonialism, Pan-Africanism, Law, West Africa, Borderlands, Human Rights, Child Labor. |
| Selected Publications | 2007 Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation’: Periurban Colonialism in Togo’s Eweland, 1900-1960 (September 2007 with the University of Rochester Press). 2006 Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa, edited with Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
“Petitioners, ‘Bush Lawyers’ and Letter Writers: Court Access in British-occupied Lomé, 1914 – 1920,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (Eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 94-114. “Introduction: African Intermediaries and the ‘Bargain of Collaboration’,” (with Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts) in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (Eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 3-34. 2005 The Ewe of Togo and Benin, edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance, (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing Services).
|
| Courses Taught | | 10A, 15, 102O, 102X, 115A, 115D, 115E, 201P, 201X, 201W, 202E, AAS 298B |
|
