Dr Robbie Aitken
Reader
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About
I am a Reader in Imperial History with particular interests in Black German History and German imperialism. More specifically my work considers the development of a Black Diaspora in Germany pre-1960. I also work on the historical creation of racial categories in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa.
African Diaspora in Germany/Europe
German and European colonialism
Constructions of race and conceptions of
blackness and whiteness
Modern German and European history
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Teaching
Department of Humanities
Social Sciences and Humanities
Black Germany, 1884-1960
British Trading Firms in colonial CameroonHistory
BA History, MRes History
Level 4:
- Empires and Encounters
Level 5:
- Race: Difference and Power in the Modern World
- Eastern Europe, 1945-1989
- Germany, 1890-1933 From Reich to Republic
Level 6:
- Citizenship, Race and Violence: Germans and Africans in Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters
- History Dissertation
MRes:
- Research Training Methods
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Research
- Humanities Research Centre
Black Germany, 1884-1960
British Trading Firms in colonial Cameroon
Young Scholars Network, Black Diaspora and Germany, University of Münster
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Publications
AITKEN, Robbie (2018). Embracing Germany: interwar German society and Black Germans through the eyes of African-American reporters. Journal of American Studies, 52 (2), 447-473.
AITKEN, Robbie (2016). A transient presence: black visitors and sojourners in Imperial Germany, 1884-1914. Immigrants and Minorties, 34 (3), 233-255.
AITKEN, Robbie (2015). Selling the mission : the German Catholic elite and the educational migration of African youngsters to Europe. German History, 33 (1), 30-51.
AITKEN, Robbie (2013). Education and migration: Cameroonian school children and apprentices in the German metropole, 1884-1914. In: HONECK, Mischa, KLIMKE, Martin and KUHLMANN, Anne, (eds.) Germany and the Black diaspora, : points of contact, 1250-1914. Studies in German History (15). New York, Berghahn, 1-16.
ROSENHAFT, Eve and AITKEN, Robbie (2013). Introduction. In: ROSENHAFT, Eve and AITKEN, Robbie, (eds.) Africa in Europe: studies in transnational practice in the long twentieth century. Migrations and Identities (2). Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1-16.
AITKEN, Robbie (2010). Surviving in the metropole: the struggle for work and belonging amongst African colonial migrants in Weimar Germany. Immigrants & minorities, 28 (2-3), 203-223.
AITKEN, Robbie (2008). From Cameroon to Germany and back via Moscow and Paris: the political career of Joseph Bilé (1892-1959), performer, "Negerarbeiter" and Comintern activist. Journal of Contemporary History, 43 (4), 597-616.
‘Blacks in Germany’, in Encyclopedia of Blacks in European Civilization, ed. Eric Martone (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, December 2008), pp. 240-43.
‘Wilhelm Munumé und Peter Mukuri Makembe’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 157-65.
‘Martin Dibobe’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 167-77.
‘“König der Abenteurer”: Joseph Soppo Muange’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 179-87.
‘Introduction’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century, eds. Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 1-16.
‘The Enemy Within, Gradations of Whiteness in German Southwest Africa’, in Basler Afrika Bibliographien Working Papers, 4 (2005), p. 1-12.
‘Politik und Performance. Deutsch-Afrikaner in Berlin der 20er und 30er Jahre’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in “Macht und Anteil an der Weltherrschaft”. Berlin und der deutsche Kolonialismus, eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (Münster: Unrast-Verlag, 2005), pp. 270-76.
Exclusion and Inclusion: Gradations of Whiteness and Socio-Economic Engineering in German Southwest Africa 1884-1914 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007).
‘Looking for Die Besten Boeren: The Normalisation of Afrikaner Settlement in German South West Africa, 1884-1914’, in Journal of Southern African Studies, 33/2 (2007), pp. 343-60.Post graduate supervision
4 postgraduate students
Media
Robbie's research focuses on the historical creation of racial categories in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa. He is currently completing a large-scale investigation into Germany’s African Diaspora and this project focuses in particular on survival strategies, political and social networks, and identity construction. He is a member of the Humanities Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam.
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