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Silke Strickrodt joined the GHIL in April 2009 as a research fellow in the field of European, and particularly British, colonialism and colonial history. She holds an MA degree in English, African and Portuguese Studies from Leipzig University, Germany, and a PhD degree in History from the University of Stirling, UK. Her PhD project dealt with Afro-European trade relations on the Western Slave Coast (in present-day Togo and Benin) in the pre-colonial period. Her research focuses on West Africa (specifically Ghana, Togo, Benin and Sierra Leone), with particular interest in the history of the Atlantic slave trade and the history of encounters between European and African cultures in the pre-colonial and colonial periods (particularly in the context of trade, Christian missionary activities and scientific exploration).

Email: strickrodt(GHI)ghil.ac.uk

• Research Fellow in Colonial History
• Organiser of the GHIL's Seminar Series

• Africa before 1900 (particularly West Africa: Bight of Benin, Gold Coast and Sierra Leone)
• the Atlantic slave trade and Africa’s role in the Atlantic world
• Christian missionary encounters in Africa
• British colonialism
• Sources for African history

Christian Missions and Female Education in Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone

Academic Background

1990-1997	Universität Leipzig, Germany: Magistra Artium, combined degree in English, African and Portuguese Studies, including exchange years at the Universidade Classica in Lisbon, Portugal (1991-92), and at SOAS, University of London, UK (1993-94)
1997-2003	University of Stirling, UK, Department of History: PhD in History
2003-2009	Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften: assistant professor (wissenschaftliche Assistentin) at the chair of African History

Scholarships and Prizes

1995	Scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service for participation in a Swahili intensive course at the Institute of Kiswahili and Foreign Languages (TAASISI), Zanzibar, Tanzania (2 months)
1997-2001	PhD scholarship of the University of Stirling and the Department of History, University of Stirling
2001	Research grant of the German Historical Institute London (3 months)
2008-2009	Research grant of the German Historical Institute in London (5 months)

Monographs and Edited Volumes
With R. Law (eds). 1999. Ports of the Slave Trade (Bights of Benin and Biafra): Papers from a Conference of the Centre of Commonwealth Studies, University of Stirling, June 1998. Stirling: Centre of Commonwealth Studies, University of Stirling, 1999.

1998. ‘Those Wild Scenes.’ Africa in the Travel Writings of Sarah Lee (1791-1856). Glienecke/Berlin and Cambridge/Mass.: Galda & Wilch Verlag.

Editions of Source Material
(Ed). 2006. Africa, vol 1 of Women Writing Home, 1700-1920: Female Correspondences across the British Empire, 6 vols, general ed. K. Stierstorfer. London: Pickering & Chatto.

Articles
(Forthcoming.) Aballow's Story: The Experience of Slavery in Mid-Nineteenth Century West Africa, as Told by Herself, in A. Bellagamba, S. E. Greene and M. Klein (eds.), African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade (2 vols). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2011. The Atlantic Slave Trade and a Very Small Place in Africa: Global Processes and Local Factors in the History of Little Popo, 1680s to 1860, in U. Schmieder, K. Füllberg-Stolberg and M. Zeuske (eds), The End of Slavery in Africa and the Americas: A Comparative Approach. Berlin: LIT-Verlag. 15-26.

2010. Die brasilianische Diaspora in Westafrika im 19. Jahrhundert, in A. Eckert, I. Grau and A. Sonderegger (eds), Afrika 1500-1900: Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Vienna: Promedia. 194-271. (This is a German translation of: The Brazilian Diaspora [2008].)

2010. African Girls’ Samplers from Mission Schools in Sierra Leone (1820s to 1840s), History in Africa, 37. 189-245.

2009. British Abolitionist Policy on the Ground in West Africa in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, in M. Childs and T. Falola (eds), The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa: Essays in Honor of Robin Law. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 155-172.

2008. The Brazilian Diaspora to West Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, in I. Phaf-Reinberger und T. de Oliveira Pinto (eds), AfrikaAmerika: Atlantische Konstruktionen. Frankfurt a. M.: Vervuert. 36-68.

2007. ‘If she no learn she no get husband.’ Christianity, Domesticity and Education at the Church Missionary Society’s Female Institution in Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone, Comparativ 5-6, Special Issue: A. Jones (ed), Christian Space and the Shaping of Gender Identities in Africa. 14-35.

2003. ‘Afro-Brazilians’ of the Western Slave Coast in the Nineteenth Century, in J. C. Curto and P. E. Lovejoy (eds), Enslaving Connections: Western Africa and Brazil during the Era of the Slavery. Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus/Humanity Books. 213-224.

2001. A Neglected Source for the History of Little Popo: the Thomas Miles Papers c.1789-1796, History in Africa, 28. 293-330.

2001. Une source négligée de l'histoire de Petit-Popo: les archives de Thomas Miles 1789-1796’, in N. L. Gayibor (ed), A l'écoute de l'histoire, vol 1 of Le tricentenaire d'Aneho et du pays guin. Lomé. 59-101. [This is a French translation of: A Neglected Source (2001).]

2001. ‘Geschichten über fremde Länder.’ Das Afrikabild in den Werken der Sarah Lee, in A. Jones (ed), Afrika in der europäischen Fiktion 1689-1856 (University of Leipzig Papers on Africa, History and Culture Series no 7), Leipzig: Universität Leipzig. 15-23.

2001. ‘At the Top of the Tree.’ Fantastic Tree-Top Worlds in English Fiction (ca. 1890-1914), Inklings: Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, 19. 10-34.

1999. On Mummies, Balloons and Moving Houses: Jane (Webb) Loudon’s The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), in E. Schenkel and S. Welz (eds), Lost Worlds and Mad Elephants: Literature, Science and Technology 1700-1900. Glienecke/Berlin and Cambridge/ Mass.: Galda + Wilch Verlag. 51-60.

1997. Zukunft als Ruine: Die architektonische Welt in H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Inklings: Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, 15. 60-78.

Reviews
2011. Journal of African History, 51, 422-24: Elizabeth E. Prevost, The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in Colonial Africa and the British Metropole, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.

2006. Journal of African History, 47, 3, 505-06: S. W. Axelrod (ed), A Danish Jew in West Africa: Wulff Joseph Wulff: Biography and Letters 1836-1842, Trondheim: Faculty of Arts, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2004.

2006. The English Historical Review, CXXI, 490, 226-30: K. Morgan, R. Law, J. Oldfield and D. Ryden (eds), The British Transatlantic Slave Trade (4 vols.), London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003.

2005. Journal of African History, 46, 3, 546-7: C. H. Gilliland (ed), Voyage to a Thousand Cares: Master’s Mate Lawrence with the African Squadron, 1844-1846, Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.

2002. The English Historical Review, CXVII, 474, 1352-3: S. W. Axelrod (ed), A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea (1760), by Ludewig Ferdinand Rømer, Oxford: Oxford UP for the British Academy, 2000.