History Department Faculty

Priya Lal

Associate Professor

Department

History

Biography

Professor Lal teaches courses on African history and modern world history. Her research focuses on the politics of national development in decolonization-era and postcolonial Africa. Currently, Professor Lal is working on a book entitled Human Resources about the training, labor, and circulation of educational and medical professionals in and beyond southeastern Africa since independence. This project recently won a Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship and an ACLS Fellowship, both from the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor Lal's first book, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World, tells the story of Tanzania's socialist experiment, the ujamaa villagization initiative of the 1960s and 70s. Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this study both examines the political imaginary of ujamaa (Swahili for "familyhood") and explores the varied ways in which ujamaa policy was implemented and experienced; it received an Honorable Mention for the African Studies Association's Bethwell Ogot Book Prize. Professor Lal has also written articles and chapters about topics including Maoism in Tanzania, African engagement with the New International Economic Order, unorthodox socialist projects across the 20th century world, reproductive labor in decolonization-era Africa, and Marxism’s varied lives in sub-Saharan Africa.