Ben Jacob is a first-year PhD student in the history of Science, Technology, Environment and Health. At the broadest level, he is interested in the relationship between histories of colonialism, labour and the environment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He studied History and English at Oxford University, before pursuing an MPhil in Cambridge University’s World History programme, where his research explored the entanglement of plantation ecologies, global capitalism and racial labour in the lives of indentured labourers in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. He is the Academic Adviser on Emerging Research at the Ameena Gafoor Institute for Indentureship Studies. Ben’s website can be accessed at www.benjacob.uk.
Peer-reviewed articles:
Jacob, Ben, ‘Planting in the Ruins: Climate, Indentureship and the Cultivation of Freedom in British Guiana and Mauritius,’ Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 26.2 (Summer 2025).
Jacob, Ben and Dabydeen, David, ‘“All you have to do is be your freest self on the field”: in conversation with Keshav Maharaj,’ Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies 4.1 (Summer 2024) [co-authored with David Dabydeen].
Selected public work:
Jacob, Ben, ‘Bad Romance: how inevitable is the green energy transition?,’ It’s Freezing in LA!, (June 2025), https://itsfreezinginla.com/articles/green-transition-inevitable.
Jacob, Ben, ‘Gardening at the End of the World,’ South Asian Avant-Garde (February 2025), https://www.saaganthology.com/vol-2-issue-2/gardening-at-the-end-of-the-world.
Jacob, Ben, ‘Guyana’s Forever Oil,’ New Internationalist (January 2025), https://newint.org/energy/2025/guyanas-forever-oil.
Jacob, Ben, ‘How to Lose a River,’ Happened Here [podcast] (October 2024), https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ZPwc6lXJAcudAmKLnXC4U?si=65ea16c2917d4030.
Jacob, Ben, ‘Platforms for the People,’ Tribune (October 2022), https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/10/platform-capitalism-deliveroo-gorillas-gig-economy-wings.