Sabine Clarke
Senior Lecturer in Modern History Chair of the Graduate School Board (Research Students)

Profile

Biography

BSc (Birmingham), PGCE (Oxford), MSc (Imperial College), PhD (London)

Sabine Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Modern History. She works on the history of science, technology and medicine in Britain and its colonial empire between WWI and 1965, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and East Africa. Her monograph, Science at the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-1965 was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.

Sabine's current project is called The Chemical Empire: A New History of Synthetic Insecticides in Britain and its Colonies, c 1920-1970 and is funded by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award.

Research

Overview

Sabine is a historian of science, technology, medicine and imperialism who works on the history of British plans for its colonies after 1940. She is interested in the relationship between scientific research and visions of economic and social development.

Projects

Sabine's book, Science at the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-1965, explored visions of industrial development promoted for the Caribbean in the late colonial period and considered the relationship between these ideas and the political and economic ambitions of Britain and America for the region.

Between 2017 and 2019 Sabine held a British Academy Small Grant for a project called "Insects, Empire and Britain's 'Warfare State'’ that investigated the ways in which the experience of war and re-armament shaped the locust control work that was done in Britain’s colonies between 1945 and 1965.

In 2019 she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award for a project called The Chemical Empire: A New History of Synthetic Insecticides in Britain and its Colonies, c 1920-1970.

This project aims to map the way that insecticides were deployed in the past, bringing to light forgotten episodes of use. We ask questions about where, and when, insecticide deployment was most intense or prolonged. This has allowed us to recover the history of the use of DDT and other synthetics against locusts in Kenya, the use of insecticides in the protection of stored produce in Ghana, or in the fight against sugar cane froghopper in Trinidad. We show that the history of insecticides in the Global South before 1965 is much more than just the history of malaria control.

Teaching

Undergraduate

An example of modules taught:

• HIS00104C Arguments and Analysis
• HIS00161H Race, Place and Health in Britain and its Empire, 1880-1960

Postgraduate

An example of modules taught:

External activities

Memberships

• Previously chaired the Outreach and Engagement Committee of the British Society for the History of Science and served on the Council of the Society
• Previously International Officer
• Member of the Programmes Committee of the British Society for the History of Science