Professor Leigh Gardner

Leigh A Gardner is Professor of Economic History in the Department of Economic History at LSE, and Research Affiliate at Stellenbosch University. She is the author of "Taxing Colonial Africa: the political economy of British imperialism" (2012) and co-author (with Tirthankar Roy) of "Economic History of Colonialism" (2020) as well as a number of journal articles and book chapters on the economic and financial history of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Her work focuses on the economic and financial history of Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which an emphasis on Africa’s connections to the global economy. Her second monograph, Sovereignty without Power: Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822-1980 (Cambridge, 2022), uses the case of one of the only African countries to remain independent through the colonial period to examine the Liberian government’s exercise of economic sovereignty and the ways that it shaped the country’s economic development over the long run. Previous work has focused on the institutional legacies of colonialism in Africa and the relationship between African countries and international financial and monetary systems.

Her work on the latter has been the foundation for a partnership with the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian. They have created several digital and physical displays of African monetary objects, which show how these objects offer a new perspective on Africa’s economic, political and social history.

Current Teaching

• EH211 Africa and the World Economy, 1500-2000
• EH401 Historical Analysis of Economic Change
• EH421 Economic History of Colonialism

External affiliations

• Research Associate, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
• Research Associate in African Economic History, University of Stellenbosch

Expertise

Africa, economic development, institutions, local government, monetary policy, public finance