Philip Gooding

Philip is a former postdoctoral fellow and a current project manager for the IOWC’s Appraising Risk Partnership. He is primarily interested in the connections between the East African Great Lakes and the wider Indian Ocean World during the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries.

He examined these connections firstly through his monograph project, On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, c.1830-1890, which conceptualises cultural interactions between peoples from the Indian Ocean littoral and the East African Great Lakes on the shores of one of the region’s most prominent but understudied lakes.

He is furthermore conducting a project on the climate history of East Africa in c.1750-1900, in which he is using historical and climatological methods to create a new climate “archive” with which to reinterpret the region’s history. Philip’s research expands conceptions of the Indian Ocean World to include terrestrial regions of East Africa, thereby also signifying the global significance of East African history.

More details about Philip’s bio and research interests can be found at: https://www.philipgooding.com/ 

Education

PhD History: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS), 2017.
MA Historical Research Methods, SOAS, 2012.
BA History, SOAS, 2011.

Select Publications

2023: ‘Historic lake level variability and current disasters on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.’ Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, 22.

2023: ‘Special Issue: ‘Vulnerability to climatic and environmental disaster and change in the Indian Ocean World.’ Co-edited with Fiona Williamson and Julie Babin. International Review of Environmental History, 9, 1.

2023: ‘Resilience and vulnerability to drought in Unyanyembe (West-Central Tanzania) in the 1830s and 1870s-90s.’ Co-authored with Cecile Dai, Riccardo Mercatali, and Daniele Battistelli. International Review of Environmental History, 9, 1.

2023: ‘‘Droughts, famines, and chronicles: The 1780s global climatic anomalies in Highland Ethiopia.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 53, 3.

2022: ‘Climate Change and Political Instability in Equatorial Eastern Africa, 1876-1884.’ International Journal of African Historical Studies, 55, 2.

2022: On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, c.1830-1890. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2022: Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World [edited volume]. Cham, CH: Palgrave-Macmillan.

2021: ‘Reality and Representation of Eastern Africa’s Past: Archaeology and History Redress the “Coast-Inland Dichotomy.” Co-authored with Jonathan Walz. African Studies Quarterly, 20, 4.

2021: ‘David Livingstone, UNESCO, and Nation-Building in 19th-21st-Century Scotland and East and Central Africa.’ Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 5, 2.

2020: Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World [edited volume]. Co-edited with Martha Chaiklin and Gwyn Campbell. Cham, CH: Palgrave.

2019: ‘Islam in the Interior of Precolonial East Africa: Evidence from Lake Tanganyika.’ The Journal of African History, 60, 2.

2019: ‘Tsetse Flies, ENSO, and Murder: The Church Missionary Society’s failed East African Ox-Cart Experiment of 1876-78.’ Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche, 1, 2.       

2019:  ‘History, Politics, and Culture in Central Tanzania,’ Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of African History.

2019: ‘Slavery, ‘Respectability,’ and being ‘Freeborn’ on the Shores of Nineteenth-Century Lake Tanganyika.’ Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 40, 1 (online publication: 2017).