About Cresa Pugh

Currently I am a PhD candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard University and starting in Fall 2022 I’ll be an assistant professor of sociology at the New School (NYC). My research examines postcolonial debates about the restitution of material culture looted from Africa that is now held in Western museums. My broad interests include history, postcolonial theory, sociology, material culture, and museum studies, and I am specifically interested in the British Empire having conducted research in the UK, Nigeria and Myanmar. In 2017 and 2021 I taught a course in a Massachusetts state prison on autobiography and race, and have, in recent years, become more interested in the genre of biography. My dream is to one day write a biography on Ethiopian jazz musician and cultural icon Hailu Mergia.

Cresa Pugh is a PhD Candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard University. For more information see scholar.harvard.edu/cresa and follow her on Twitter @CresaPugh.

Cresa's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Cresa:

Craig Seymour, "Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross" (2017)

December 21, 2022

Luther

Craig Seymour
Hosted by Cresa Pugh

On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was …

Paul Van Der Velde, "Life Under the Palms: The Sublime World of the Anti-Colonialist Jacob Haafner" (NUS Press, 2020)

June 20, 2022

Life Under the Palms

Paul Van Der Velde
Hosted by Cresa Pugh

Jacob Gotfried Haafner (1754–1809) was one of the most popular European travel writers of the early nineteenth century, writing in the Romantic mode. …

Matthew Wilson, "Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)

April 8, 2022

Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire

Matthew Wilson
Hosted by Cresa Pugh

Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) is about the life and times of Richard C…