Caroline Elkins

Caroline Elkins (born 1969) is a professor of history and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and the founding director of Harvard's Center for African Studies.

Her book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (2005), won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It also was the basis for successful claims by former Mau Mau detainees against the British government for crimes committed in the detention camps of Kenya in the 1950s. The case, known as Mutua and Five Others versus the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was filed in London's High Court of Justice in 2009 and, claiming systematic abuse and torture during the late colonial era in Kenya, is the first case of its kind filed by any former colonized population against the British government. Elkins served as expert from the time of the claimant's filing until it was settled with a substantial cash payment and official apology to the Mau Mau claimants in June 2013.

In addition to her work on colonial Kenya, Elkins also studies the colonial encounter in Africa during the twentieth century, as well as in many parts of the former British Empire including Malaya, Singapore, Cyprus, and Zimbabwe. She has won numerous other fellowships and awards, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Elkins majored in history at Princeton, graduating summa cum laude before moving to Harvard for her master's and doctorate. Her signature historical methodology, which includes an integrative reading of written sources and extensive ethnographic field work and oral interviews, has led to major revisions in the fields of African and British imperial histories, and has also generated significant criticism, particularly from conservative academics. Elkins' Harvard PhD was concerned with the detention system employed by the British colonial authorities during the Mau Mau Uprising, and served as the basis of the 2002 BBC documentary, Kenya: White Terror, in which Elkins and her fieldwork were both profiled. Kenya: White Terror won the International Red Cross Award at the Monte Carlos Film Festival. Elkins's dissertation also provided the foundation for her 2005 publication, Imperial Reckoning, which was met with critical acclaim in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Economist. In addition to winning the Pulitzer-Prize for General Nonfiction in 2006, Imperial Reckoning was also named as a book of the year by The Economist, an editors' choice by The New York Times, and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Award. In its commendation of Elkins, the Pulitzer Prize Committee wrote: "Imperial Reckoning is history of the highest order: meticulously researched, brilliantly written, and powerfully dramatic. An unforgettable act of historical re-creation, it is also a disturbing reminder of the brutal imperial precedents that continue to inform Western nations in their drive to democratize the world."

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