Fellowship / Fellows

Caroline Elkins

  • 2012–2013
  • History
  • ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellow
  • Harvard University
Headshot of Caroline Elkins
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Caroline Elkins is a professor of history and African and African American studies at Harvard University and the chair of its Committee on African Studies and Committee on Ethnic Studies. Her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005), was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Her work has been covered in international newspapers, magazines, and television and radio programs.

At Radcliffe, Elkins will analyze British counterinsurgency operations after World War II, with case studies that include Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Nyasaland, and Palestine.

Elkins is a contributor to the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review, and the Washington Post. She worked with the BBC to produce the documentary Kenya: White Terror, which won the International Red Cross Award at the Monte Carlo Film Festival. She has been a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow at Harvard and served on juries for the National Book Award and the Mark Lynton History Prize. Elkins has received awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Carr Center for Human Rights, Fulbright-Hayes, the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Social Science Research Council, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She received her AB from Princeton University and her AM and PhD from Harvard. This fellowship year at the Radcliffe Institute is supported by an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship; Elkins was also a fellow in 2003–2004. 

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

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