Dr Robbie Aitken

I joined Sheffield Hallam University as a Senior Lecturer in 2010 and I am currently a Reader in History.

Prior to joining, I was first a Research Fellow and then a Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Liverpool. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 2002 during which time I also spent a year of research at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

My research and teaching interests include the history of the Black Diaspora in Germany, European colonialism, and constructions of race in pre-1945 Europe. I have published widely on Germany's first Black community including Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960 (with Eve Rosenhaft, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 2015). My current work looks at Black compensation claims made in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

African Diaspora in Germany/Europe

German and European colonialism

Constructions of race and conceptions of
blackness and whiteness

Modern German and European history

Department of Humanities

Social Sciences and Arts

Black Germany, 1884-1960

British Trading Firms in colonial Cameroon

History 

BA History, MRes History

Level 4: Empires and Encounters
Level 5: Race: Difference and Power in the Modern World
Level 5: Eastern Europe, 1945-1989
Level 5: Germany, 1890-1933 From Reich to Republic
Level 6: Citizenship, Race and Violence: Germans and Africans in Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters
Level 6: History Dissertation
Level 7: Research Training Methods

• Humanities Research Centre

I am currently working on the experiences of people of African heritage during the Nazi period and their efforts to receive compensation from the West German state in the aftermath of World War Two.

Young Scholars Network, Black Diaspora and Germany, University of Münster

Black Germany Exhibition with Destination Arts

Journal articles

Aitken, R. (2018). Embracing Germany: interwar German society and Black Germans through the eyes of African-American reporters. Journal of American Studies, 52 (2), 447-473. http://doi.org/10.1017/S002187581700041X

Aitken, R. (2016). A transient presence: black visitors and sojourners in Imperial Germany, 1884-1914. Immigrants and Minorties, 34 (3), 233-255. http://doi.org/10.1080/02619288.2016.1202769

Aitken, R. (2015). Selling the mission : the German Catholic elite and the educational migration of African youngsters to Europe. German History, 33 (1), 30-51. http://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghu109

Aitken, R. (2012). Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany. CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY, 45 (3), 565-567. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938912000416

Aitken, R. (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. http://doi.org/10.1080/02619288.2010.484248

Aitken, R. (2009). Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885-1939. CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY, 42 (4), 774-776. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938909991221

Aitken, R. (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. http://doi.org/10.1177/0022009408095417

Aitken, R. (2007). Looking for die Besten Boeren: The normalism of Afrikaner Settlement in German South West Africa, 1884-1914. Journal of Southern African Studies, 33 (2), 343-360. http://doi.org/10.1080/03057070701292632

Book chapters

Aitken, R. (2019). Forgotten histories: Recovering the precarious lives of African servants in Imperial Germany. In Garrido, F.E., Koegler, C., Nyangulu, D., & Stein, M.U. (Eds.) Locating African European Studies: Interventions—Intersections—Coalitions. Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Locating-African-European-Studies-Interventions-Intersections-Conversations/Garrido-Koegler-Nyangulu-Stein/p/book/9781138590328

Aitken, R. (2018). Germany's black diaspora: the emergence and struggles of a community, 1880s–1945(1). In Black Diaspora and Germany (BDG), (Ed.) The black diaspora and Germany:Deutschland und die schwarze diaspora. (pp. 84-100). Munster, Germany: Edition Assemblage: https://www.edition-assemblage.de/buecher/black-diaspora-and-germany/

Aitken, R. (2013). Education and migration: Cameroonian school children and apprentices in the German metropole, 1884-1914. In Honeck, M., Klimke, M., & Kuhlmann, A. (Eds.) Germany and the Black diaspora, : points of contact, 1250-1914. (pp. 213-230). New York: Berghahn

Books

Aitken, R., Stroh, S., & Ellerbe, C. (Eds.). (2018). Black Diaspora and Germany: Deutschland und die Schwarze Diaspora. (1). Munster Germany: edition assemblage.

Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (Eds.). (2013). Introduction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (Eds.). (2013). Introduction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Aitken, R., & Rosenhaft, E. (2011). Black Germany: The making and unmaking of a diaspora community, 1884–1960. http://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649575

Aitken, R., & Aitken, R.J.M. (2007). Exclusion and Inclusion Gradations of Whiteness and Socio-economic Engineering in German Southwest Africa, 1884-1914. Peter Lang.

Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (2004). Africa in Europe: Studies in transnational practice in the long twentieth century. http://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846317842

I have developed, designed and created a travelling exhibition linked to my research on Germany's Black community. This has been staged both in the UK and in Germany.
https://www.hereandblack.org/black-germany/
And: I have worked on several exhibition projects in Germany including 'Zurückgeschaut' in Berlin-Treptow: http://zurueckgeschaut.de/

2010-Present Member of Young Scholars Network, Black Diaspora and Germany, University of Münster
2017-Present H-Net Black Europe Book Review Editor

Current doctoral projects:
Minority Language Rights in Arizona, 1960–2000
Everyday life in diaries from the ghettos of Warsaw and Łódź
The Propaganda of the Aid Spain Movement 1936 - 1938

Current Masters' projects:
From Accra to Chorlton: Black Activism in Britain, 1930s-1960s
Uncovering the Network of Terror: British Discovery of Nazi Concentration Camps 1933-49

Completed doctoral projects:
British Colonial Development Discourse and African Agency: The Case of Busoga, Uganda 1940-1962
British attitudes towards German prisoners of war and their treatment: 1939-48
Completed Masters' projects:
Countering Holocaust Denial: Historical and Legal Approaches from the David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. & Deborah Lipstadt Libel Trial

My research focuses on the development of a Black Community in Germany from the onset of realised colonialism in the 1880s up to and beyond the Second World War. I also have an active interest in the history of European colonialism.