Charlotte M. Walker

Charlotte Walker is an African historian by training. She is completing a manuscript on the legal and political history of Cameroon. Recently, her research has focused on governance, corruption, and economic expansion in West and Equatorial Africa, as well as southern East Africa. In her capacity as an Africanist, she has also contributed to studies conducted by non-governmental organizations and multilateral institutions operating in Africa. She received her doctoral degree in December 2009 from the Department of History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where she focused on politics and economics in West and East Africa. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she was a Lecturer at Harvard University in the History and African & African American Studies Departments. Since graduating from Princeton University in 2003 and throughout her doctoral and post-doctoral work, she has published articles and contributed to surveys on African affairs. She has collaborated with the World Bank, the International Peace Institute, the United Nations, and various organizations and non-profits in Africa, as well as universities including the Université de Douala in Cameroon, and the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique. Her first book, tentatively titled Intimate Enemies: Law, Politics, and the Art of Adjudication in Colonial Africa will reveal the complex nature of colonial law in French West Africa. Her future research will continue this line of legal inquiry in contemporary Africa and include analyses of governance, corruption, human rights, and economic growth vis-a-vis the legal realities on the continent.