Prof Alan Lester

Biography

Biography
Alan Lester's first degree was from the University of Cambridge and his PhD from the University of London. He has been at the University of Sussex since 2000, becoming Professor of Historical Geography in 2006 and Research Theme Leader: Global Transformations in 2010. He has held visiting lectureships at the Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare, and an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury.

Role

Alan Lester is Professor of Historical Geography, Co-Director of the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and Research Theme Leader: Global Transformations.

Community and Business

As Research Theme Leader: Global Transformations, I am currently facilitating projects in collaboration with Kew Gardens, the British Library, the National History Museum, the Met Office and various humanitarian and global health-oriented NGOs.

My research follows three broad, intersecting themes, each of which is prominent in the forthcoming book with Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance:  Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire  (Cambridge University Press).

The first and broadest theme is the exploration of relational space in the colonial world. In particular I have examined the ways in which relationships between competing colonial discourses, projects and networks have shaped metropolitan-colony relations in the nineteenth century British Empire. This theme is most pronounced in the book Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth Century South Africa and Britain (2001) (extracted in Routledge's New Imperial Histories Reader, 2009), and articles in the Journal of Historical Geography with Sam Hyson (forthcoming), The New Zealand Geographer with Fae Dussart (2008), Geographical Research (2006), History Compass (2005), and History Workshop Journal (2002). A grant from The Leverhulme Trust enabled the research which is culminating in the present book project.

The second theme is an interest in the people, ideas, discourses and practices of humanitarianism. The ways in which humanitarian projects were and are constructed in contestation with other transformative interventions has long been a preoccupation of mine, manifested especially in articles in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2002), Progress in Human Geography with David Lambert (2004), Gender Place and Culture with Fae Dussart (2009) and the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, with Rob Skinner . As a result of post-humanist critiques of humanism as a whole, I am now becoming more interested in the construction of new, cosmopolitan humanisms with which to defend some of the more positive aspects of universalism (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2011).

The third theme is the ways in which the life geographies of particular people can allow insight into agency, power, politics and practice in colonial spaces. This interest is most obviously represented in the book that David Lambert and I co-edited, Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (2006). It is also traced through studies of George Augustus Robinson in Johnston and Rolls' Friendly Mission Companion Volume (2008), Thomas Fowell Buxton in Gilbert and Tiffin's Burden or Benefit: Imperial Benevolence and its Legacies (2008), and George Arthur in Annals of the Association of American Geographers (2012).

Proposals for doctoral research in these and associated areas are welcome.

Alan teaches the first year course Colonialism and After, the second year course Globalization and Empire and the final year option Cultures of Colonialism. Alan's postgraduate teaching includes European Representations of Africa, as part of the MA in Globalisation, Ethnicity and Culture. He is currently supervising D.Phil students working on Black Consciousness and Christian thought in 1970s South Africa, new imperial men in colonial Australia and England, and embodied experiences of British migrants in Aoteoroa/New Zealand.

Student Consultation

Tuesday 2-3

Wednesday 2-3

Lester, Alan and Dussart, Fae (2014) Colonization and the origins of humanitarian governance: protecting aborigines across the nineteenth-century British Empire. Critical Perspectives on Empire . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (In Press)

Lester, Alan (2013) Benevolent empire? Protecting indigenous peoples in British Australasia. In: Empire calling: administering colonial Australasia and India. Cambridge University Press India , New Delhi, pp. 3-23. ISBN 9789382264767

Lester, Alan (2013) Spatial concepts and the historical geographies of British colonialism. In: Writing imperial histories. Studies in imperialism (100). Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9780719086007

Skinner, Rob and Lester, Alan (2012) Humanitarianism and empire: new research agendas. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40 (5). pp. 729-747. ISSN 0308-6534

Lester, Alan (2012) Foreword. In: The new expatriates: postcolonial approaches to mobile professionals. Routledge, London and New York, pp. 1-8. ISBN 978-0415503662

Lester, Alan (2012) Race and citizenship: colonial inclusions and exclusions. In: The Victorian world. Routledge worlds . Routledge, London and New York, pp. 381-397. ISBN 9780415491877

Lester, Alan and Lambert, David (2012) 'Shrewsbury, William James'. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hyson, Samuel and Lester, Alan (2012) 'British India on trial': Brighton military Hhospitals and the politics of empire in World War I. Journal of Historical Geography, 38 (1). pp. 18-34. ISSN 0305-7488

Lester, Alan (2012) Humanism, race and the colonial frontier. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37 (1). pp. 132-148. ISSN 0020-2754

Lester, Alan (2011) Personifying colonial governance: George Arthur and the transition from humanitarian to development discourse. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (6). pp. 1468-1488. ISSN 0004-5608

Lester, Alan (2009) Imperial networks: creating identities in nineteenth century South Africa and Britain. In: The new imperial histories reader. Routledge readers in history . Routledge, pp. 139-146. ISBN 9780415424585

Lester, Alan (2009) Political geography: colonialism. In: International encyclopedia of human geography. Elsevier. ISBN 9780080449111

Lester, Alan and Dussart, Fae (2009) Masculinity 'race', and family in the colonies: protecting Aboriginies in the early nineteehth century. Gender, Place and Culture, 16 (1). pp. 63-75. ISSN 0966-369X

Lester, Alan and Dussart, Fae (2008) Trajectories of protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in early 19th century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand Geographer, 64 (3). pp. 205-220. ISSN 0028-8144

Lester, Alan (2008) Thomas Fowell Buxton and the networks of British humanitarianism. In: Burden or Benefit: Imperial Benevolence and its Legacies. Philanthropic & nonprofit studies . Indiana University Press, pp. 31-48. ISBN 9780253350770

Lester, Alan (2008) George Augustus Robinson and the humanitarian and settler networks of the early nineteenth century British Empire. In: Friendly mission: the tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834 companion volume. Quintus Publishing (University of Tasmania and Arts Tasmania). ISBN 9780977557257

Lester, Alan (2007) Empire. In: The SAGE handbook of political geography. Sage Publications, pp. 455-470. ISBN 9780761943273

Lester, Alan and Lambert, David, eds. (2006) Colonial lives across the British Empire: imperial careering in the long nineteenth century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9780521847704

Lester, Alan (2006) Colonial networks, Australian humanitarianism and the history wars. Geographical Research, 44 (3). pp. 229-241. ISSN 1745-5863

Lambert, David and Lester, Alan (2006) Introduction:Imperial spaces, imperial subjects. In: Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-31. ISBN 9780521847704

Lester, Alan (2006) Imperial circuits and networks: geographies of the British Empire. History Compass, 4 (1). pp. 124-141. ISSN 1478-0542

Lester, Alan (2004) [Review] Zine Magubane (2004) Bringing the Empire Home: race, class and gender in Britain and colonial South Africa. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10 (4). pp. 910-911. ISSN 1359-0987

Lambert, David and Lester, Alan (2004) Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy. Progress in Human Geography, 28 (3). pp. 320-341.

Lester, Alan (2004) Trans-imperial networks: Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand during the first half of the nineteenth century. In: Home and colonial: a celebration of Robin A Butlin's contribution to historical geography. Historical Geography Research Group . RGS-IBG Historical Geography Research Series. ISBN 9781870074216

Lester, Alan (2003) Colonial and postcolonial geographies. Journal of Historical Geography, 29 (2). pp. 277-288. ISSN 0305-7488

Lester, Alan (2002) Constructing colonial discourse: Britain, South Africa and the Empire in the nineteenth century. In: Postcolonial geographies. Writing past colonialism . Continuum, pp. 29-45. ISBN 9780826460820

Lester, Alan (2002) British settler discourse and the circuits of empire. History Workshop Journal, 54 (1). pp. 27-50. ISSN 1363-3554

Lester, Alan (2002) Colonial settlers and the metropole: racial discourse in the early 19th-century Cape Colony, Australia and New Zealand. Landscape Research, 27 (1). pp. 39-49. ISSN 0142-6397

Lester, Alan (2002) Obtaining the 'due observance of justice': the geographies of colonial humanitarianism? Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (3). pp. 277-293. ISSN 0263-7758

Lester, Alan (2001) Imperial networks: creating identities in nineteenth century South Africa and Britain. Routledge, London and New York. ISBN 9780415198509

Lester, Alan (2001) Historical geography. In: The geography of South Africa in a changing world. Oxford University Press South Africa, pp. 60-86. ISBN 9780195716825

Lester, Alan, Nel, Etienne and Binns, Tony (2000) South Africa, Past, Present and Future. Prentice Hall, London and New York. ISBN 9780582356269

Lester, Alan (2000) Global capitalism, social dislocation and cultural discourse in South African history. South African Historical Journal, 42 (1). pp. 277-289. ISSN 0258-2473

Lester, Alan, Nel, Etienne and Binns, Tony (2000) South Africa's Current Transition in Temporal and Spatial Context'. Antipode, 32 (2). p. 17.

Lester, Alan (1999) Historical geographies of imperialism. In: Modern historical geographies. Longman, pp. 100-120. ISBN 9780582357792

Lester, Alan (1998) Settlers, the state and colonial power: the colonization of Queen Adelaide Province, 1834-37. Journal of African History, 39 (2). pp. 221-246. ISSN 0021-8537

Lester, Alan (1998) Reformulating identities: British settlers in nineteenth century South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23 (4). pp. 515-531. ISSN 0020-2754

Lester, Alan (1998) Colonial discourse and the colonization of Queen Adelaide Province, South Africa. Discussion Paper. Historical Geography Research Series.

Lester, Alan (1998) "Otherness" and the frontiers of empire: the Eastern Cape Colony, 1806-c1850. Journal of Historical Geography, 24 (1). pp. 2-19. ISSN 0305-7488

Lester, Alan (1997) The margins of order: strategies of segregation on the eastern Cape frontier, 1806‐c. 1850. Journal of Southern African Studies, 23 (4). pp. 635-653. ISSN 0305-7070

Lester, Alan (1996) Cultural construction and spatial strategy on the Eastern Cape frontier, 1806-c1838. South African Geographical Journal, 78 (2). pp. 98-107. ISSN 0373-6245

Lester, Alan (1996) From colonialism to democracy: a new historical geography of South Africa. I B Tauris, London and New York, 278pp. ISBN 9781860641763