Interests

Geographic Field(s):  African History; Modern European History: Britain and Its Empire

Thematic Field(s):  Colonial, Imperial, and Diasporic History; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Principal Research Interest(s):  Science in Africa; Cultural Preservation and Heritage; Imperial History; West African Social and Intellectual History

Biography

Colin Bos specializes in the history of science, law, material culture, and imperial governance in West Africa. He is currently working on a book about the history of archaeology, heritage preservation, and cultural property law in Nigeria. His dissertation, “Conservators of the World: Relics, Archaeology, and the State in Southwestern Nigeria,” was the co-winner of Northwestern’s Harold Perkin Prize for Best Dissertation in History and was funded by the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship. His article, “John Augustus Abayomi Cole and the Search for an African Science, 1885-1898,” was published in the March 2022 issue of the history of science journal Isis.