Peace Movements Project Seminar: Nuclear Power and Decolonisation in Africa (1957-1963)
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In the mid-twentieth century, the dawn of the nuclear age coincided with the end of colonial empire. This convergence of technological and political revolutions on such a global scale had few precedents. The hope for those who recognised its possibilities was that the world would become a more equal place. The fear was that it would entrench disparities in wealth and perceptions of human worth.Drawing on a book project centred on Europe and Africa, this talk puts forward the proposition that the nuclear age had a tangible and lasting influence on the ways global relations were renegotiated during decolonisation. It also reflects on the episode’s insights for the technological, geopolitical, and ecological shifts we are presently living through.
This seminar is organised with Leiden University's Institute for History in the framework of The Peace Movements Project.
Speaker
Chloë Mayoux is a global and diplomatic historian of technology, empire, and international relations in modern Europe and Africa. She is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Vienna's Institute for History (funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences), and concurrently the Martin Sherwin Fellow in Nuclear History at City University New York (CUNY).
Chloë is completing a book on decolonisation in the nuclear age, based on her doctoral thesis. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of Global History, Relations Internationales, The Thinker, and The Yearbook for the History of Global Development. Her fieldwork in Africa has been funded by the Royal Historical Society, and the Society for the Study of French History, among others.
She previously served on the Editorial Board of the Revue d'Histoire Contemporaine de l'Afrique, and was Managing Editor at the Cold War History journal.
Before joining the University of Vienna, Chloë was an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard's Belfer Center. She earned her Ph.D. in International History from the London School of Economics and was a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at Sciences Po's Centre for History.
Date, time and location
26 October 2026
16:00-17:30
Herta Mohr Building / Faculty of Humanities, Witte Singel 27a, 2311 BG Leiden
Room 0.31
Registration
Posted on 1 October 2026, last modified on 5 October 2026