Thomas T. Spear

Bio Sketch:

While serving in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, I became fascinated with exploring the little known history of Africa and Africans. In pursuit of this, I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Kenya and Tanzania and written widely on pre-colonial history and the methods historians employ to recover, reconstruct, and interpret it. I have taught at Latrobe University in Australia, Williams College, and the University of Wisconsin, where I also served as Director of the African Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. I have served as editor of the Journal of African History, was founding editor in chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online in African Studies, and am founding and current editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. I have received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others, for my research.

Research Interests:

Pre-colonial African History, East African History, Southern African history, and historical methods and theory.

Selected Publications:

* East African Expressions of Christianity (ed., with I.N. Kimambo). Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio; Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota: Nairobi: EAEP, 1999.

* Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru. Oxford: James Currey, Berkeley: California, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 1997.

* Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa (ed., with Richard Waller). London: James Curry, Athens: Ohio, Nairobi, EAEP, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 1993.

* The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500. (with Derek Nurse). Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, 1985.

* Kenya's Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa. London and New York: Longman, 1981.

* The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda Peoples of the Kenya Coast to 1900. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978.