Brian Peterson

Research interests

I’m an historian of Africa, specializing in francophone West Africa and the Sahel. My research spans colonialism and the Cold War periods, with particular interests in politics, revolutions, religious change, Islam, environmental history, gender history, and migration. My first book, Islamization from Below: The Making of Muslim Communities in Rural French Sudan, 1880-1960 (Yale University Press, 2011), examined the history of Islam under colonialism in southern Mali. My second book, Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021), is a political biography of the African revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara in the country of Burkina Faso during the 1980s. Currently, I’m working on an environmental, political and social history of the Sahel drought of the 1980s, examining local and global responses. I’m also continuing research on Thomas Sankara and the broader political history of the late Cold War period in Africa.

My work has been reviewed or showcased in The New York Review of Books, Africa is a Country, Jacobin, Journal of African History, the New York Times, African Arguments, Choice, American Historical Review, The Nation, The Economist, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, World Politics Review, African Studies Quarterly, among other venues. I’ve also done interviews with the Africa is a Country podcast, the NewBooksNetwork podcast, Public Radio International, Al Jazeera, France 24, The Morning Star, BBC world service, Voice of America, and various local radio stations.