معرفی
Devin Smart is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at West Virginia University, specializing in modern African history with a focus on capitalism, labor, and environmental change in twentieth-century East Africa. His teaching portfolio spans Colonial Africa, global labor history, climate change history, and world history survey courses.
His educational background includes:
- PhD in History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2017)
Dr. Smart's research investigates the intersections of food systems, urban labor, and environmental transformation in colonial and post-colonial Kenya. His first book project, Consuming Capitalism: Working-Class Food and Urban Life in Kenya’s Port City, examines street food economies and social reproduction in Mombasa, while his second project, Working the Water: Fishing and Extractive Capitalism in Twentieth Century Kenya, analyzes fisheries commercialization. A third project historicizes Africa's twentieth-century energy transition and contemporary climate debates.
His methodology combines archival research with over 70 oral interviews, emphasizing gendered labor dynamics and racial politics in urban settings. Current work extends to tourism marketing in post-colonial Kenya and energy transitions in the Global South.
Smart's publications reveal a cohesive trajectory analyzing capitalism's material manifestations through food, labor, and environmental lenses in East Africa. His journal articles in Journal of African History and International Labor and Working-Class History demonstrate interdisciplinary rigor, connecting local provisioning systems to global capitalist structures while foregrounding working-class agency in colonial port cities.
