Joshua Alston

Profile

I completed my undergraduate studies in Leeds (2014-17). Since then I have completed MA (Research) in Colonial and Global History at Universiteit Leiden (2017-2019). My MA thesis focussed on Anglo-Jewish colonial networks during the early 20th Century, with case studies on South Africa, Canada and Australia. In 2019, I returned to Leeds to begin a WRoCAH funded PhD focussing on Jewish experiences of whiteness in South Africa in the long apartheid era (1937-2005). I have worked extensively on Jewish communal archives in the UK, espeically at the LMA and am currently working on a mixture of Jewish archives in the UK and South Africa, published sources relating to Jewish South Africa and oral histories.

Research interests

I consider myself broadly a historian of race within white supremacist societies. My research has many focussed on the intersection between Jewish and whiteness studies, with a particular emphasis on settler colonial contexts. I have written in detail about whiteness in South Africa, the ways in which white supremacist structures effect the Jewish community, and Jewish history and politics more broadly. I am also interested in Jewish leftist movements and decolonial politics and histories of white supremacy in South Africa.