Benjamin N. Lawrance (born 1973) is a
legal historian who works on nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Africa, with a particular focus on
West Africa. Until 2017, he was the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies[1] in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the
Rochester Institute of Technology. He works on comparative and contemporary slavery and
trafficking, citizenship, human rights, and the law of asylum and refugees. He is currently Professor of African History at the
University of Arizona.
He became the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, a position which honors
Barber Conable.[1] Subsequently, he took a position at the
University of Arizona.[3]
He serves on the Advisory Board of PROTECT: the National Association for the Protection of Children.[4]
Works
Benjamin Lawrance's earlier work focused on the connection between twentieth-century Ewe identity creation and the creation of a specific periurban zone in southern Togo.[5] Lawrance has also published several edited collections, including "Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa" (with Richard Roberts and Emily Osborn)[6] and "Trafficking in Slavery's Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa" (with Richard Roberts).[7]
2017. Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Durham: Duke University Press) with Jacqueline Stevens
ISBN9780822362913
2016. Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press) with Anne Bunting and Richard L. Roberts
ISBN978-0821422007
2015. African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), with Iris Berger, Meredith Terretta, Jo Tague, and Trish Hepner Redeker.[8]
2015. Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (New York: Cambridge University Press), with Galya Ruffer.[9]
2014. Amistad's Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press)[10]
2012. Trafficking in Slavery's Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, "New African Histories" Series), with
Richard L. Roberts.
ISBN978-0-8214-2002-7[11]
2012. Local Foods Meet Global Foodways: Tasting History (New York: Routledge/Taylor Francis), with
Carolyn de la Peña 978-0415697750[12]
2007. Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation’: Periurban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland, 1900-1960 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press).
ISBN978-1580462648[13]
2006. Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press) with
Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts [Reprinted 2013].
ISBN978-0299219505
2005. The Ewe of Togo and Benin, Volume III in the "Handbook of Eweland" series (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing Service)
ISBN978-9988626549
Interests
With Jacqueline Stevens, Lawrance is currently exploring the experiences of individuals who cannot prove their citizenship or identity.[14]
Lawrance regularly serves as a legal consultant on the contemporary political, social and cultural climate in West Africa for ongoing immigration matters.[citation needed] He has served as an expert witness for over two hundred asylum claims of West Africans, including many from Togo.[citation needed] He has been an expert in different national jurisdictions, including the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K, Israel, Hong Kong, and South Korea, and his opinions have featured in several appellate rulings in the U.S. and rulings from the Queen's Bench in the U.K.[15]
He is an Editor for CIHA Blog, Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa.
^Stanford University Department of History Placements Website:
"Stanford Department of History". Archived from
the original on 23 June 2013. Retrieved 18 January 2013. accessed 18 January 2013