Benedetta Rossi is a historian of Africa, trained as an anthropologist. Her work focuses on twentieth century African and global history, slavery and other forms of unfreedom, migration, planned development aid, gender and sexuality. Benedetta is working on her second book, Slavery and Abolition in Twentieth Century Africa, contracted to Cambridge University Press. Benedetta is Professor of History at the Department of History of University College London (UCL), UK. She holds a European Commission Advanced Grant on ‘African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa’ (AFRAB).
Benedetta’s first book, From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800-2000 (Cambridge University Press 2015, African Studies Series) was one of the five finalists of the 2016 Melville J. Herskovits Award awarded by the African Studies Association (USA) and one of the six finalists of the 2016 Fage and Oliver Prize awarded by the African Studies Association (UK). She is the editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (Liverpool University Press, second paperback edition 2016), co-editor with Anne Haour of Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Brill, 2010), co-editor with Toby Green of Landscapes, Sources, and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (Brill, 2018) and co-editor with Paulin Ismard and Cécile Vidal of Les Mondes de l’Esclavage: Une Histoire Comparée (Seuil, 2021; German edition: Welten der Sklaverei. Eine vergleichende Geschichte, Jacoby & Stuart, 2023). She is member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of African Slavery, the Slave Trade and the Diaspora of the on-line Oxford Research Encyclopaedia (main editor: Martin Klein). She serves on the Advisory Editorial Board of Slavery & Abolition.
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