Norman Aselmeyer

Dr Norman Aselmeyer’s research focuses on the social and cultural history of colonialism, with particular attention to British rule in East Africa and German colonialism in a global perspective. He is interested in how infrastructures and cities (re)shaped empires, how everyday actors navigated and contested colonial domination, and how migration and diasporic experiences, especially those of Africans in Europe, intertwined with these histories. He is also interested in questions of memory, especially how colonialism was remembered in Africa and how the colonial past was handled in Europe. His current book projects include a history of Black Germany from the 1880s to the 2000s and a study of Mau Mau and anti-colonial protest in Nairobi.

At Oxford, Norman serves as the Pat Thompson DAAD Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Wadham College. He teaches undergraduate papers across modern European, African, and world history since around 1800, as well as Approaches and Disciplines of History classes. He welcomes supervision requests in modern African and colonial history.

Norman studied history at the University of Mainz in Germany and at Peking University in China before earning his PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence. He has held positions as Lecturer in Modern History at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Bremen, and served as a Junior Research Fellow at University College London’s Institute of Advanced Studies. Norman has held affiliations and fellowships at a range of institutions, including the University of Nairobi, the German Historical Institute London, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Leibniz Institute of European History, and Moi University, Eldoret.

Dr Aselmeyer's co-edited book, Stadt der Kolonien: Wie Bremen den deutschen Kolonialismus prägte, was published by Herder Publishing House. He and co-editor, Virginie Kamche, discuss the book in the Literahaus podcast, “The consequences of colonialism are visible everywhere in the city”.