As a historian of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, I specialize in the political history of Guinea Bissau, with a focus on the meaning of women's participation in national liberation struggles. My current research explores the ways in which a focus on the perspective of women fighters leads to re-writing current historical narratives of the Guinea Bissau national liberation war. This research has methodological implications for historical research on national liberation struggles more broadly. In addition to considering women as active agents in reshaping the narrative of the war, I also take seriously their reasons for participating, based on concerns for family and community. Their perspective serves to refocus the historiography of national liberation struggles on concrete lived reality rather than clichéd political abstractions. My research also examines the ambiguous relations between African national liberation movements and movements for women's rights and emancipation within those movements. For many years, I have also had a research interest in the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1803, and the dissemination of the idea of this revolution throughout African political and intellectual circles in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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"Revisiting the Guinea Bissau Liberation War: PAIGC, UDEMU and the Women's Rights and Emancipation Question, 1963-1974," Portuguese Journal of Social Science, volume 14, Number 3 (2015), p. 361-377

"Promise and Betrayal: Women fighters and national Liberation in Guinea Bissau," in Feminist Africa, Issue 20, Fall 2014

"Gendered Patterns of Migration and Changes to Gender Relations in Guinea-Bissau." In Patrick Chabal and Toby Green edited book Guinea Bissau: From Micro-State to "Narco-State, edited by Patrick Chabal and Toby Green Fall 2016.

Works in Progress 

Book Manuscript project: "Courage does not Come From a Sardine Can but From the Heart": The Gendered Realms of Power during Guinea Bissau's National Liberation Struggle, 1963-1974.

Articles: “Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC Exile in Guinea, 1959-1962: Women and the Salvation of the Nationalist Organization."

"Methodological Analysis of the Guinea Bissau Nationalist Movement 1963-1974: Amilcar Cabral-Marxist or Pragmatist?" (This draft is submitted to the peer-reviewed Journal of African Policies (a Peer review journal)).

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