Participants Selected for the 2009 Seminar on Decolonization

The 15 scholars listed below have been selected, from among more than 80 outstanding applicants, to participate in the National History Center’s international seminar on decolonization, to be held July 5 though July 31, 2009, in Washington, D.C. The seminar, which is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is cosponsored by the American Historical Association and the Library of Congress, and will be held in the Jefferson Building of the library.

In the list below, the name of the participant is followed by degree details, current institutional affiliation, if any, and the topic selected by the participant for research and discussion during the seminar:

• Yoav Di-Capua, PhD, 2004, Princeton University; assistant professor, University of Texas at Austin. “Arab Thought on the Eve of Dystopia: 1945–1967”

• James Esdaile, PhD candidate, Harvard University (anticipated 2009). “The End of Empire in the Aden Colony: The Role of Social and Commercial Networks in British Decolonization”

• Ellen Feingold, DPhil candidate, Merton College, Oxford University (anticipated 2010). “Colonial Judges in a Fading Empire: The Decolonization of Tanganyika’s High Court”

• Ryan Irwin, PhD candidate, Ohio State University (anticipated 2010). “Relationship between Decolonization and the Cold War between 1958 and 1971, Framed within Global Apartheid (South Africa)”

• Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, PhD, 2008, King’s College, London; fellow at Department of History & Civilization of the European University Institute. “From Africa to Europe: Portugal and the End of European Colonial Empires, 1945–1975”

• S. R. Joey Long, PhD, 2006, Wolfson College, Cambridge; assistant professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. “Imperiling Decolonization?: SEATO, Anglo-American Relations, and Singapore”

• Julie MacArthur PhD candidate, University of Cambridge (anticipated June 2009); “Mapping Independent Nations: Regional Approaches to Decolonization in East Africa”

• Lien Hang Nguyen, PhD, 2008, Yale University; assistant professor, University of Kentucky. “Between the Storms: An International History of the Vietnam War 1968–1973”

• Paul Ocobock, PhD candidate, Princeton University (anticipated 2009). “Late 1950s and Early Post-colonial period in Kenya”

• Katayoun Shafiee, PhD candidate, New York University (anticipated May 2009). “British Controlled Oil Industry in Iran and the Anglo-American Engineered Coup of 1953”

• Taylor Sherman, PhD, 2006, Downing College, Cambridge University; postdoctoral research fellow, Faculty of History; Royal Holloway University of London. “The Integration of the Princely State of Hyderabad into India, 1944–1953”

• Benjamin Silverstein, PhD candidate, La Trobe University, Australia (anticipated 2010). “Indirect Rule and Informal Empire: Decolonizing Settler Colonialism?”

• Rajagopal Vakulabharanam, PhD, 2004, University of Wisconsin-Madison; lecturer, Department of History, University of Hyderabad, India. “Decolonization and the Indian Left: Communism in Andhra Pradesh, 1947–1955”

• Natalya Vince, PhD, 2008, Queen Mary College, University of London; lecturer, French Studies, School of Languages and Area Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK. “Constructing Post-Colonial Womanhood in Algeria and Tunisia: Comparisons, Contrasts, and Mutual Representations in the Early Years of Independence”

• Felicia Yap, PhD, 2008, University of Cambridge; lecturer, University of Cambridge and Nihon University, Tokyo. “Captives of Empire: Colonial Society under Japanese Internment, 1941–1945”