Skip to content
Martin S. Shanguhyia

Martin S. Shanguhyia

Contact Information:

mshanguh@syr.edu

315.443.3829

524 Eggers Hall

Martin S. Shanguhyia

Associate Professor, History Department


Courses

  • 2024 Fall
    • HST 213 Africa: Ancient Times to 1800
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
    • HST 300 Selected Topics - Development in Modern Africa
  • 2024 Summer
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
  • 2024 Spring
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
  • 2023 Fall
    • HST 309 Africa and Global Affairs 1870 - Present
    • HST 213 Africa: Ancient Times to 1800
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
    • HST 300 Selected Topics - Development in Modern Africa
  • 2023 Summer
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
  • 2023 Spring
    • HST 309 Africa and Global Affairs 1870 - Present
    • HST 122 Global History 1750 to Present
    • HST 214 Modern Africa: 1800 - Present
  • 2022 Fall
    • HST 213 Africa: Ancient Times to 1800
  • 2022 Spring
    • HST 401 Senior Seminar - Development & Environment

Highest degree earned

Ph.D., Department of History, West Virginia University, 2007

Bio

Martin S. Shanguhyia’s research focuses on colonial and postcolonial Africa, with a specific concentration on Eastern Africa. Of interest to him is the intersection between environment and state and community interests. What are the outcomes when these interests clash? How do states and African communities use critical environmental resources to fend off competition while hedging their interests? Shanguhyia also likes to interrogate how regulation of the natural environment shapes economic and social relations between the state and local communities.

He has published "Population, Tradition & Environmental Control in Colonial Kenya, 1920-1963" (University of Rochester Press, December 2015). Shanguhyia has also co-edited (with Toyin Falola) "The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). His current research project analyzes colonial administration of Kenya’s northwestern borderlands, especially the regulation of mobilities and their impact on inter-ethnic relations. 

Areas of Expertise

Colonial and postcolonial Africa; environmental and economic history; rural economic transformation; access to critical natural resources; development; resource governance; and production and flow of commodities

Selected Publications

Presentations and Events

Post-doctoral Fellows Workshop, Carter Woodson Institute, University of Virginia, Charlotteville, "Discussant on James Parker’s 'Permeable Boundaries: Development and the Continuity of Resource Sharing in the Northern Frontier of Kenya'" (November 17, 2021)

I was invited by the Institute for African Development at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University, as part of their annual, weekly seminar presentations, "A community’s view of the roles of colonial and postcolonial states in alleviating cross- Border violence and human insecurity: the case of the Turkana of northwestern Kenya, circa 1920 to the present" (February 20, 2020)

African Studies Association Annual Meeting, "African Agency, Control Crisis, and the Quest for Ecological ‘Order’ in Colonial Western Kenya" (November 21, 2019)

60th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, "The Past and Present of Land Access in Africa" (November 16, 2017 - November 18, 2017)

Colloquium on the theme Power, Political Economy, and Historical Landscapes of the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, SUNY Binghamton University, "Taming Nature: The Political Economy of Wildlife Conservation in Early Colonial East Africa" (April 29, 2017)

Previous Teaching Appointments

Assistant Professor of History (Africa, Pre-colonial, Colonial, Postcolonial) Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University 2010 to the Present

Visiting Assistant Professor College of William and Mary, Williamsburg VA, Lyon Tyler Department of History, 2009-2010

Visiting Assistant Professor Ohio State University, Columbus OH, Department of African American and African Studies, 2008-2009