IOWC PhD Students
Steven Serels
Steven Serels, a native of New York City, is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at McGill University in Montreal. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in New York City, where he studied photography and sculpture, and a Masters of Arts in history from McGill University. His masters research paper, entitled Town Planning for Empire: British Colonial Planning and Re-Planning of Khartoum, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1914, examined the intellectual resources brought to urban planning during the early years of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the ways in which the definition of authoritative knowledge shared by colonial administrators shifted as colonial state-building initiatives were abandoned in favor of economic development projects. Steven was awarded the Daisy A. Lartimer Memorial Prize in History from McGill University (2007), a Research Assistantship from the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University (2007) and a four year full tuition scholarship from the Cooper Union (2001).
Steven's major field of study is 20th century British African history with a sub-focus on colonial Sudan and the history of Western medicinal practices in colonial Africa. He is especially interested in examining how credentialed technical experts were incorporated into the colonial state by focusing on the transition from 'gentlemanly' colonial states of the late nineteenth century to colonial technocracies of the 1940s and 50s. The prospective title of his PhD dissertation is The Limits of Possibility: The Struggle to Define 'Development' in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Steven's Conference Papers Include:
The Acclimatization of Experts in Tropical Laboratories: Andrew Balfour, the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory and the Contemporary Study of 'Medicine and the Colonies' presented at ICOHTEC 2008: Crossing Borders in the History of Technology at the University of Victoria, August 5th-10th, 2008
The Nutritional Content of Wage Labor: The Politics of Nutrition Science in Britain's East African Colonies, 1926-1939 presented at 2008 CAAS Conference: 'Reflecting on Africa's Riches: Resources, Conflict and Exploitation' at the University of Alberta, May 1st-4th, 2008
Latourization of Africa: Malaria Control and the Limits of Actor-Network Theory presented at The First IOWC Graduate Conference on Africa at McGill University, Montreal, April 28th, 2008
Political Landscaping: Land Registration, the Definition of Land Ownership and the Evolution of Colonial Objectives in the Sudan, 1899-1924 presented at Transcending Boundaries, Bridging the Continent: The 16th Annual Graduate Research Conference on African Studies at Boston University, March 14th-15th, 2008
