East Africa's professionals in the making of our global information society

INFOSOC critically historicises our contemporary information society, demonstrating its global roots through original research into the lives of East African information professionals during a period of Cold War internationalisms (1950s-80s).

To understand the persistence of information inequality, we need to place contestations over information in their socio-political contexts and historicise the social science disciplines that codified the meaning and power of information.

This interdisciplinary project places information professionals (journalists, librarians, broadcasters, and government information officers) at its centre.

How did trainers, trainees, and new professionals imagine and use what they called information and, crucially, with what consequences for our global information society?

To answer this question, I will take my expertise in East Africa's global history into new interdisciplinary territory at a leading international institution for research on histories of mass communication, Freie Universitaet Berlin (FUB), under the supervision of an expert in the field, Dr Valeska Huber.

Two substantial secondments in East African institutions, St Augustine University Tanzania (SAUT) and the British Institute in East Africa (BIEA), will enhance INFOSOC's innovative methodological basis and broaden its societal impact.

Through a programme of training-through-research and a targeted communication and dissemination strategy, including a hybrid workshop organised in Berlin, the PF will allow me to pioneer a new sub-field of global information history and to demonstrate the pertinence of the East African case to academic audiences beyond African history, as well as to public audiences in Europe and East Africa.

By the end of the PF, I will have established an independent research profile as a public-facing scholar with a research-driven teaching portfolio and a commitment to sustainable collaborations between European and East African institutions.