Robert Harms

Robert Harms is the Henry J. Heinz Professor of History & African Studies at Yale University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1978). His research focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, with specialties in environmental history, colonialism, and the Atlantic slave trade. He teaches graduate seminars on African environmental history, agrarian systems, colonialism, and decolonization.

Education:

• Ph.D. in History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1978

His work interrogates the interplay between ecological systems and human societies in Africa. Notable contributions include The Diligent (2002), which reconstructs the transatlantic slave trade through a French naval officer’s journal, and Africa in Global History (2018), a synthesis of Africa’s role in world historical processes. Translations of his works exist in multiple languages including Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese.

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