Karin Pallaver (PhD History, Cagliari, 2005) is Associate Professor of African History at the Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, where she teaches Modern African History (BA), African History and Institutions (MA), and Indian Ocean History (MA). She is President of the Association of African Studies in Italy (ASAI) and member of the board of the African Economic History Network (AEHN). She was previously employed at the British Museum as researcher in the comparative and collaborative project "Money in Africa". Her research
interests lie in the social and economic history of 19th-century
and early colonial East Africa. Major themes linked to her research
are pre-colonial African trade, pre-colonial and colonial
currencies, 19th-century urbanism and German and British
colonialism in East Africa. She is currently working on the
monetary history of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania during the colonial period. Her
research is based on extensive archival research in Tanzania, Kenya, Great Britain, Germany and Italy. She is part of several international research projects, including the “International Collaborative Research on the Variety of Exchange and Multiplicity of Money in Global History”, University of Tokyo; AFCHOS (Africa Comparative History of Occupational Structure), University of Cambridge; AFLIT (African long-term inequality trends), University of Lund; the "Global collaboratory on the history of labour relations 1500-2000", Institute of Social History, University of Amsterdam.
She is Principal Investigator in the research projects:
2017-2020: “Monetary Transitions: The Introduction of Colonial Currencies in East Africa and Their Impact on Indigenous Societies and Institutions”, PRIN 2015, funded by Ministero Italiano dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca Scientifica;
2017-2020: “Monetary Transitions: The Introduction of Colonial Currencies in East Africa And Their Impact On Indigenous Societies And Economies”, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Selected publications:
- 2019 "A currency muddle: resistance, materialities and the local use of money during the East African rupee crisis (1919-1923), Journal of Eastern African Studies, 13:3, 546-564.
- 2018 (with Jane I. Guyer) "Money and Currency in African History", Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of African History, New York: Oxford University Press
- 2018 “Currencies of the Swahili World”, in S. Wynne-Jones and A. La Violette (eds.), The Swahili World, Routledge: London and New York, 447-457
- 2018 “Paying in Cents, Paying in Rupees: Colonial Currencies, Labour Relations and the Payment of Wages in Kenya (1890-1920)”, in K. Hofmeester and P. de Zwart (eds.), Colonialism, Institutional Change and Shifts in Global Labour Relations, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 295-325.
- 2016 "From Venice to East Africa: History, Uses and Meanings of Glass Beads", in K. Hofmeester and B.S. Grewe (eds.) Luxury in Global Perspective: Commodities and Practices, c. 1600-2000, World History Series, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 192-217.
- 2015 “The African Native has no Pocket”. Monetary Practices and Currency Transitions in Early Colonial Uganda,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 48, 3, 471-499.
- 2014 “Population Developments and Labor Relations in Tanzania: Sources, Shifts and Continuities from 1800 to 2000”, History in Africa, 41, 307-335.
