Education
BA, University of Richmond 2013
MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2020
MA Thesis: ‘Caretaking as “Civilizing”: Catholic Orphanages and the Mission Civilisatrice in Saint-Louis, Senegal, 1936-1949’
Research Interests
I study modern African history with a particular focus on twentieth-century urban Senegal. My research interests include the operation of French colonialism in Senegal, ideas of care and care-taking under colonial rule, the construction of African childhood and family, and the concept of humanitarianism in historical context. My dissertation project considers how colonial officials, French Catholic missions, and Senegalese Africans claimed and negotiated their responsibility to identify and care for “orphaned” and “abandoned” children in the city of Saint-Louis, Senegal. In interrogating how the question of orphaned children in Saint-Louis was involved in state-building projects, my research raises issues of colonial and contemporary relevance: the relationship between church, state, and community in caring for marginalized populations, the legal and social citizenship of children, and the entanglement of care, control, and violence.