Derek R. Peterson teaches African history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya and the editor of several books, including Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa and Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic. Peterson is a recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Modern History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.