Christopher Conte graduated with a BA in history from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1981. He subsequently served for two years as a US Peace Corps Volunteer teaching high school English and history in Narok, Kenya. His experiences in eastern Africa evolved into an intense scholarly interest in the study of African history and landscape. Conte subsequently earned MAs in International Affairs and in Linguistics from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and a PhD in African history at Michigan State University. His research has examined environmental history of eastern Africa from the perspective of agroecological change, forest history, the formation of national parks, and the history of science.
RCC Research Project: Land Use, Landscape History, and Locality on Pemba Island, Tanzania
Lunchtime Colloquium Video - Spices, Slaves and Landscape History on an Indian Ocean Island
Selected Publications:
- Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains. Series in Ecology and History, edited by James L.A. Webb. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
- "Nature Conservation in Africa’s Great Rift Valley: A Study in Culture and History." In National Parks and the Nation, edited by Mark Fiege, Jared Orsi, and Adrian Hawkins. Oklahoma University Press, forthcoming in 2015.
- "Africa’s Mountains: Collecting and Interpreting the Past." In "Crossing Mountains: The Challenges of Doing Environmental History," edited by Marcus Hall and Patrick Kupper, RCC Perspectives 2014, no. 4, 55–63.
- "Forest History in East Africa’s Eastern Arc Mountains: Biological Science and the Uses of History." Bioscience 60 (2010): 309–13.
- "Colonial Science and Ecological Change: Tanzania’s Mlalo Basin, 1888–1946." Environmental History 4, no. 2 (1999): 220–44.