Professor Robbie Aitken
Professor of Imperial History
- Department Of Humanities
- Department of Culture and Media
- Sheffield Creative Industries Institute
- Humanities Research Centre
- Culture and Creativity Research Institute
Summary
I am an historian of Black Europe and of Empire and I have written widely on the development of a Black community in Germany. My current research focus is on the Black experience of Nazi Germany and Black compensation claims made in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
About
I joined SHU in 2010 after having previously worked at the University of Liverpool. I am an historian of Black Europe and my research and teaching interests include the history of the Black Diaspora in Germany, European colonialism, and constructions of race in pre-1945 Europe. My first book project, Exclusion and inclusion: Gradations of whiteness and socio-economic engineering in German Southwest Africa, 1884-1914 (Lang, 2007) looked at constructions of race in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa. I have since 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 research focuses on the Black experience of Nazi Germany as well as post-war compensation claims made by Black victims.
I have also worked on a number of museum and memorialisation projects in Germany and I have developed my own travelling exhibition, Black Germany 1884-1945, which has been shown in the UK, Germany and Cameroon and used with a number of school groups.
Currently I am a book review editor for H-Black Europe and I am an active contributor to the website Black Central Europe.
African Diaspora in Germany/Europe
German and European colonialism
Constructions of race and conceptions of
blackness and whiteness
Modern German and European history
Teaching
Department of Humanities , Department of Culture and Media , Sheffield Creative Industries Institute
College of Social Sciences and Arts
Black Germany, 1884-1960
British Trading Firms in colonial Cameroon
Subject Area
Department of Humanities.
Courses
BA History
Modules
- Empires and Encounters
- Ideas into Action
- Germany 1890-1933
- Race: Difference and Power
- Citizenship, Violence and Race: Germans and Africans in Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters
Research
- Humanities Research Centre
- Culture and Creativity Research Institute
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.
Featured Projects
- Link 1: Making Visible the Invisible: Germany's Black diaspora, 1880s -1945
- Link 2: Black Central Europe
Collaborators and Sponsors
Publications
Journal articles
Aitken, R. (2025). Denied a Certificate of Fitness to Marry: The Nuremberg Race Laws as a Threat to Black German Futures. Holocaust and Genocide Studies. http://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcaf003
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. By David Ciarlo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2011. Pp. xviii + 419. Cloth $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-05006-8. 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. By Kenneth J. Orosz. New York: Peter Lang. 2008. Pp. xii+345. Cloth $82.95. ISBN 978-0-8204-7909-5. 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 Normalisation 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/
Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (2013). Introduction. In Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (Eds.) Africa in Europe: studies in transnational practice in the long twentieth century. (pp. 1-16). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press
Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (2013). Introduction. In Rosenhaft, E., & Aitken, R. (Eds.) Africa in Europe: studies in transnational practice in the long twentieth century. (pp. 1-16). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press
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
Aitken, R. (2008). Germany, Blacks in. In Encyclopedia of Blacks in European History and Culture Volumes 1 2. (pp. 240-243).
Books
Aitken, R., Stroh, S., & Ellerbe, C. (Eds.). (2018). Black Diaspora and Germany: Deutschland und die Schwarze Diaspora. (1). Munster Germany: edition assemblage.
Aitken, R. (2013). Africa in Europe: Studies in transnational practice in the long twentieth century. Liverpool University Press. https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781846318474/
Aitken, R., & Rosenhaft, E. (2013). Black Germany. Cambridge University Press. 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.
Theses / Dissertations
Porter, K.E. (2022). Perceptions of daily life in diaries from the Warsaw and Łódź ghettos. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Aitken, R., Petersson, N., & Stibbe, M. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00543
Burke, S.J. (2021). An encultured imperialism: British travel writing from the post-Napoleonic Atlantic periphery. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Collins, B., & Aitken, R. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00385
Exhibitions
Aitken, R. (2015). Black Germany, 1884-1945. [1 banner stand, 3 large pop-ups, 6 smaller pop-ups]. Multiple locations.
Aitken, R. (2015). Black Germany, 1884-1945. [1 banner stand, 3 large pop-ups, 6 smaller pop-ups]. Multiple locations.
Aitken, R. (2015). Black Germany, 1884-1945. [1 banner stand, 3 large pop-ups, 6 smaller pop-ups]. Multiple locations.
Aitken, R. (2015). Black Germany, 1884-1945. [1 banner stand, 3 large pop-ups, 6 smaller pop-ups]. Multiple locations.
Other activities
I am currently a book review editor for H-Black Europe and I am an advisory board member for the Peter Lang Book series, Imagining Black Europe.
Postgraduate supervision
I am currently supervising the following PhDs:
- The Aid Spain movement in interwar Britain
- Everyday Life in Diaries from the Ghettos of Warsaw and Łódź
Media
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.