Caroline Elkins

Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School, and the Founding Oppenheimer Director of Harvard's Center for African Studies. Her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist. Her subsequent book, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire was a finalist for the Ballie Gifford Prize, selected by The New York Times as one of the Notable 100 Books of 2022, and chosen by the BBC, Waterstone’s, and History Today as a Book of the Year for 2022. She and her research were the subjects of a BBC documentary titled, “Kenya: White Terror,” which won the International Red Cross Award at the Monte Carlos Film Festival. Her research also served as the basis for the historic Mau Mau reparations case in the High Court of London (2009-2013). Elkins was expert witness for the claimants, who received an apology and a 20-million-pound settlement from the British government for the torture and systematic abuse they endured in 1950s Kenya.

Elkins and her work have been profiled in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, The Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe, as well as on various television and radio programs including CNN, ABC, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, BBC (Radio One, Radio Four, World News), and NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered. She has been a contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Republic.

At Harvard, Elkins was selected twice as a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow, elected as a member of the Faculty Council for Arts and Sciences, and inducted as an honorary member of the University’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter. She has also held numerous other fellowships and awards including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Scholars (Burkhardt Fellowship), Fulbright, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Rockefeller Center (Bellagio, Italy).

Selected Publications