British historian Sue Onslow is the third IHC Visiting Scholar, an IHC programme whose aim is to promote a short programme of research and advanced training activities each year by an international historian.

Sue Onslow is a leading academic in the field of Cold War studies and decolonisation. She was a lecturer at the London School of Economics (1994-2012) and in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. From 2012 to 2023, she worked at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, where she also served as Deputy Director (2015-2020) and Director (2022-23). She was the main interviewer for a major oral history project, “An Oral History of the Modern Commonwealth” (1965-2012). Her publications include books such as Southern Africa in the Cold War post-1974 (co-edited with Anna-Mart Van Wyk, 2013); Robert Mugabe (with Martin Plaut, 2018); and Consuls in the Cold War (co-edited with Lori Maguire, 2023).

During her visit to the IHC, she will hold two public activities: a seminar on oral history, on the morning of 29 September; and the José Medeiros Ferreira Lecture, which marks the start of the 2023/2024 academic year of the PhD in History at NOVA FCSH, in the late afternoon of the same day, where he will give a lecture entitled “The Monarchy and the Commonwealth”.