Dr Rachel Taylor

rachel taylor
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Junior Research Fellow, Jesus College

 

I am a historian of East and Central Africa, with a particular focus on histories of gender, labour, and consumption. My work explores how Africans build meaningful lives and communities in times of great social, political and economic change. Within this broad field, my current research project Sewing the City: Dressmaking and Modernity in Postcolonial Lubumbashi, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, seeks to provide a new history of the modern African city through analysing the work and lives of dressmakers in Lubumbashi.

I came to Oxford in 2018, working on the ERC-funded project Comparing the Copperbelt, headed by Miles Larmer. I completed my BA at Durham, my MA at SOAS (University of London), and my PhD in African history at Northwestern University (USA.)

Research Interests

Research Disciplines:

  • History

Research Keywords:

  • Gender; Labour; Cosmopolitanism; Craft; Consumption

Countries:

  • Tanzania
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
  • Eastern Africa

 

Contact Information

Email: rachel.taylor@africa.ox.ac.uk

Publications

Edited Volume

Across the Copperbelt: Urban and Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities, co-edited with Miles Larmer, Enid Guene, Benoît Henriet, and Iva Peša(forthcoming - Oxford: James Currey, 2021).

 

Book Chapters

' The Decolonisation of Community Development in Haut Katanga and the Zambian Copperbelt, 1945 to 1990', co-authored with Miles Larmer, in Miles Larmer , Enid Guene, Benoît Henriet, Iva Peša and Rachel Taylor (eds.), Across the Copperbelt: Urban and Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities (forthcoming - Oxford: James Currey, 2021).  

 

‘Introduction’, co-authored with Miles Larmer, Enid Guene, Benoît Henriet and Iva Peša, in Miles Larmer, in Miles Larmer , Enid Guene, Benoît Henriet, Iva Peša and Rachel Taylor (eds.), Across the Copperbelt: Urban and Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities  (Oxford: James Currey, 2021) pp. 1-24.