Thomas Keegan

Thomas Keegan is a historian of modern Africa with a focus on intellectual history, race, and science in colonial West Africa. His research explores how African intellectuals in early twentieth-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, used newspapers to align global scientific and political discourses—such as race science and eugenics— to challenge the racial order and to offer competing visions of political legitimacy under colonial rule.

His current book project, based on his dissertation, examines science talk in early twentieth-century West African newspapers as a mode of political expression. Focusing on Freetown, Sierra Leone, it shows how African intellectuals used print to engage with imperial discourses on eugenics, racial psychology, and public health. Through these debates, writers affirmed their own rationality as a basis for political legitimacy, critiqued colonial rule, and navigated the constraints of censorship. In linking science to concerns about health, reproduction, and national fitness, newspapers became dynamic spaces where colonial pressures, commercial advertising, and political expression converged.

Before joining the University of Kansas, Thomas earned his Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University and taught at Johns Hopkins, University of Baltimore Maryland County, and Albion College.