Empire and Cultural Transformations

Dr Florian Kappeler examines the German-speaking reception of the Haitian Revolution through journals, histories, and literary texts, tracing how revolutionary knowledge circulated in the 19th century. Dr Riley Linebaugh explores archival formations at the end of the British Empire and their entanglement with decolonisation, state-building, and postcolonial struggles over historical authority. Dr Gianna Zocco turns to Dualla Misipo’s early postcolonial writing, reading autobiographical fiction alongside archival traces to probe questions of belonging, mobility, and historical reconstruction.

Together, the session offers a reflection on how colonial and postcolonial worlds are written through archives – and how those archives continue to shape the present.