Gladstone Prize for former Caius History lecturer
- 08 July 2016
Emma Hunter, until recently College Lecturer in History and Director of Studies in History at Caius, has been awarded the prestigious Gladstone Book prize by The Royal Historical Society. Her book, Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania(Cambridge University Press, 2015), was researched while at Caius.
The prize is awarded annually and entries must be published in English and be the author's first solely-written history book. They can be on any historical subject not primarily related to British history.
Announcing the award, the RHS judges commented: "This sophisticated book is surely at the vanguard of a new way of writing intellectual history. It builds a history of ideas ‘from below’ by working from Swahili language newspapers and other texts in circulation in Tanganyika and from archives in Tanzania and elsewhere.
"Tanzanians become political thinkers and agents in the transformation of key mid-twentieth century concepts such as freedom, progress, democracy, representation and citizenship. The changing senses of a ‘word in motion’ gesture to the changing possibilities open to Hunter’s agents as decolonization took root. Hunter takes seriously prior forms of political organisation and so never sees Africa as pre-political, nor does she see the rise of single-partyism as a straight story. Instead she places Africa at the heart of the widest canvas of international and world history.
"The way Hunter’s focus moves between the microscopic conditions of localities far from any metropolis to the biggest questions of the twentieth century history, such as the theory and practice of democracy, is deeply admirable.”
Dr Hunter joined the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh in January 2015. She is Deputy Director of the Graduate School and Head of the Asian and African History Section.