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Caroline Elkins is an American historian and professor, born in 1969. She is currently a Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where she also holds the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professorship at Harvard Business School and is an Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School. Elkins is the founding director of Harvard’s Center for African Studies.

Elkins gained significant recognition for her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (2005), which examines the British colonial government’s violent suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya during the 1950s. This work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2006 and served as a critical resource in the historic Mau Mau reparations case against the British government, resulting in a formal apology and financial settlement for the victims.

Her subsequent book, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (2022), has received widespread acclaim, being named one of The New York Times Top 100 Books of 2022 and a finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. It explores the violent legacies of colonialism and has been praised as a “tour de force” in historical scholarship.

Elkins’s research methodology combines written sources with ethnographic fieldwork and oral interviews, leading to significant revisions in African and British imperial histories. She has been featured in various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC programs, and has contributed to numerous academic journals.

Throughout her career, Elkins has received several fellowships and awards, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Fulbright Program. She completed her undergraduate studies at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude, before earning her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Elkins continues to teach courses on modern Africa, colonial violence, and the British Empire at Harvard.