Katherine Bruce-Lockhart (she/her) is an Associate Professor in History at the University of Waterloo and is also a faculty member at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Scholar.
Bruce-Lockhart’s research examines the global history of prisons, punishment, and human rights. Her recent book, Carceral Afterlives: Prisons, Detention, and Punishment in Postcolonial Uganda, analyzes how prisons and other colonial carceral spaces persisted in Uganda after independence and critiques their ongoing existence. Bruce-Lockhart is currently working on several comparative and collaborative projects: one on British colonial incarceration and punishment on the African continent; another tracing the history of the Nelson Mandela Rules and movements for prisoners’ rights and prison abolition within the United Nations and other international forums; and one looking at the mass early releases of prisoners around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her research, teaching, and community engagement, Bruce-Lockhart focuses on how history can inform and impact ongoing struggles for justice and liberation. This includes her contributions to a report for the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and her involvement in community organizations focused on anti-racism, prisoners’ rights, and prison abolition. She is part of the Department of History’s Anti-Racism Taskforce (HART).
Education:
- PhD History, University of Cambridge
- MSc. African Studies, University of Oxford
- BA (Honours), University of Toronto
Research, Teaching, and Supervision Interests:
- Global History
- History of prisons and punishment
- Punishment and Society
- Human Rights and Justice
- Critical Prison Studies
- African History
- Gender History
- Social History
- Critical Archive Studies
- Oral History
Courses Taught:
- HIST605 - Global Governance in Historical Perspective
- HIST422 - Incarceration and Resistance in South Africa During Apartheid
- HIST323 - Global History of the Prison
- HIST322 - Global History of the Detention Camp
- HIST263 - The Age of Revolution: Europe in the 19th Century
- ARTS130 - Violence, Truth, and Justice
Selected Awards and Honours
- Joel Gregory Book Prize, Canadian Association of African Studies, 2024
- Peggy Renner Award for Teaching and Curricular Innovation, Western Association of Women Historians, 2024
- Canadian Historical Association’s Teaching Prize, 2023
- Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching, Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo - 2022
- Alice Wilson Award, Royal Society of Canada - 2017
Recent Publications
- “Archives, prisons and person-centered historical praxis: doing social history research on incarceration in colonial Africa.” History Australia 21:2 (2024): 184-203 (co-authored with Tolulope Akande).
- “Discourses of Development and Practices of Punishment: Britain’s Gendered Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Colonial Kenya.” In The Oxford Handbook of Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies. Edited by Martin Thomas and Gareth Curless, 482-500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023 (co-authored with Bethany Rebisz).
- Carceral Afterlives: Prisons, Detention, and Punishment in Postcolonial Uganda. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2022.
- Decolonising State and Society in Uganda: The Politics of Knowledge & Public Life. Suffolk: James Currey, 2022 (co-edited with Jonathon L. Earle, Nakanyike B. Musisi, and Edgar C. Taylor).
- “Coloniality and Power in Uganda’s Archives.” In Decolonising State and Society in Uganda: The Politics of Knowledge & Public Life. Edited by Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, Jonathon L. Earle, Nakanyike B. Musisi, and Edgar C. Taylor, 197-221. Suffolk: James Currey, 2022. (co-authored with Riley Linebaugh)
- “Introduction: African penal histories in global perspective.” Punishment & Society 24:5 (2022): 759-770 (co-authored with Erin Braatz and Stacey Hynd).
- “Prisoner releases in postcolonial Uganda: Power, politics, and the public.” Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement 3:1 (2022): 1-20.
- “More than a million prisoners have been released during COVID-19, but it’s not enough.” The Conversation. November 9, 2021.
- “How politics have played a big role in the release of prisoners.” The Conversation. June 15, 2020.