Dr. Anaïs Angelo

Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher, Elise Richter Fellow
Institute for Cultural Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences

(c) ÖAW

I am a historian specializing in colonial and postcolonial African history, with a focus on postcolonial politics, women's and gender history. I hold a degree in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris, specialized in African Studies at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and completed my Ph.D. in History at the European University Institute (Florence). Currently, I am based at the Institute of Cultural Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In 2022, I was awarded the Elise Richter Fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund’s Excellency Program for top early-career female researchers. My three-year project (263,982.18 €), titled "A history of African female parliamentary pioneers" examines the pioneering efforts of the first women in Africa to campaign for parliamentary seats in the 1960s and 1970s, a time when politics was overwhelmingly male-dominated.

My research has been published by renowned academic presses, including Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Oxford University Press. I have explored topics such as the state formation, the makings of presidential powers in Africa, the power of biographiy writing, the history of detention in colonial Africa, and African feminist philosophy.

Since 2024, I have served as Co-Editor in Chief of the Revue de l'Histoire Contemporaine de l'Afrique, and since 2022, I have been an elected member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, an institution that supports the development of outstanding early-career researchers in Austria.