Alex White

My PhD research focuses on the production and reception of subversive radio propaganda in British East Africa. As part of this project, I'm also interested in the development of Afro-Asian solidarity movements, technical assistance programmes and the political history of cultural exchange.

Older projects have focused on the public diplomacy of the Middle East in Africa and the development of national, regional and racial identity in the postcolonial world. My first peer-reviewed article, 'Broadcasting Brotherhood? Interactive Diplomacy and Postcolonial Identity in Kol Yisrael’s African Services, 1960-1966', investigated how new forms of Israeli identity permeated their attempts to conduct radio diplomacy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I'm also invested in doing public history and increasing the accessibility of academic research through research blogs and through collaboration with local interest groups.

I have previously supervised undergraduate students for Paper 21 (Empires in World History: From the Fifteenth Century to the First World War), Paper 23 (World History Since 1914) and Paper 29 (The History of Africa from 1800 to the Present Day).

I've also taken part in Cambridge's History for Schools programme. In Lent 2019, I assisted the convenors of 'Hungry Historians: a Delicious and Disgusting Food Journey Through Time'. In Michaelmas 2021, I submitted by own virtual lesson: 'Lies, Spies and Secret Ties: The Cold War Around the World' (link). In Summer 2021, I also led a class of secondary school pupils for Trinity Hall's Schools Outreach Programme.

'Reading the African Review', African Print Cultures: Workshop and Seminar (panel discussion), African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge (9th March 2023).

'Listening to the revolution: archives for the history of subversive broadcasting in Africa', Dans les plis des archives audiovisuelles africaines: temporalités, politiques, technologies’, Institut des mondes africains (29th September 2022).

 'Imagining the African audience: colonial reactions to ‘hostile’ broadcasts in British East Africa', Radio Soundscapes in (Post)Colonial Settings, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (7th July 2022).

'Our Man in Cairo: East African participation in anti-colonial radio production, 1954-1964', Oxford Transnational and Global History Conference, University of Oxford (25th June 2022).

'Mind control: how propaganda works and how it doesn't', Luminomelia, University of Cambridge (6th May 2022).

'Militarisation, misinformation and the coronavirus pandemic in East Africa', McMenemy Seminar, University of Cambridge (2nd February 2022).

'Bloody dogs and poisonous communists: colonial anxiety, imperial identity, and the British response to foreign broadcasting in East Africa, 1954-1964', World History Workshop, University of Cambridge (11th November 2021).

'The signal and the noise: studying propaganda as world history', CLIO: The Cambridge University History Society, University of Cambridge (1st November 2021).

'The Trial of Dedan Gituri​: propaganda as cultural production in anti-colonial radio plays, 1958-1964', Cultural History Workshop, University of Cambridge (25th November 2020).

'Receiving revolution: interpreting audience in anti-colonial broadcasting to Africa, 1956-1966', Crossing Borders with a New Medium: Radio and Imperial Identities, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (24th September 2020).

'Bringing civilisation to our black brothers: visions of race in Israeli interactions with Africa, 1958-1973', Histories of Race Graduate Workshop, University of Cambridge (15th January 2020).

'The Cairo connection: exiled Africans and anti-colonial activism in Zamalek, 1955-1965', McMenemy Seminar, University of Cambridge (23rd October 2019).