Keri Lambert

Keri Lambert is a PhD student specializing in twentieth-century African and environmental history. Her dissertation, “Planting Trees, Tapping Ghanaians: Cultivating Rubber and Nationhood in 20th Century Ghana,” will explore the ways in which farmers, the state, and transnational companies consolidated land, labor, and capital to develop rubber plantations in colonial and post-colonial Ghana. The rubber industry presents a particularly useful case to observe how Ghanaians in rural areas of the peripheral Western Region have engaged with hegemonic institutions and resources – both natural and social – in dynamic ways throughout political and economic reforms during the colonial and post-colonial eras. She is advised by Bob Harms, and her dissertation committee includes Paul Sabin, Dan Magaziner, and Jeffrey Ahlman (from Smith College).