Dr. Riley Linebaugh

Riley Linebaugh is a historian and archivist interested in imperial violence and postcolonial justice and the relationships between archive-making and history-writing. Linebaughholds a PhD in History from Justus Liebig University, Giessen, an MA in Archives and Records Management from University College London and a BA in History from the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to the University of Potsdam, she held postdocs at the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin and the Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz. She has worked as an archivist/archivist assistant at the British Library, the Uganda High Court, and the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. She is a member of the editorial board of Theory of History at Work/Geschichtstheorie am Werk.

Her monograph, Curating the Colonial Past: The ‘Migrated Archives’ and the Struggle for Kenya’s History, deals with the transnational struggle to conceal and reveal records of colonial violence in Kenya and elsewhere in the British Empire. Her current work examines the role of female secretaries and practices of secret-keeping within British colonial administrations in connection with colonial violence.

Teaching materials on colonial archives:

“Colonial Archives” in Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method Articles (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, October 2024).

‘’Migrated Archives’ and the Social Lives of Sources’ in Interrogating Colonial Documents and Narratives (Marlborough: AM, 2024).

Other publications include:

“Colonial Fragility: British Embarrassment and the so-called ‘Migrated Archives,’” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 50 (4), 729-756.

“’Joint Heritage’: Provincializing an Archival Ideal,’ in (ed. James Lowry) Disputed Archival Heritage (Routledge, 2022)19-48.

“The Archival Colour Line: Race, Records and Post-Colonial Custody,” with James Lowry, Archives and Records 42 (3), 284-303. Awarded the Archival History Article Prize in 2022 by the Society for American Archivists.

“Coloniality and Power in Uganda’s Archives,” with Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, in Decolonisation and Public Life in Uganda, eds. Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, Jon Earle, Nakanyike Musisi, Edgar Taylor (James Currey, 2022).