Leslie Sabakinu

My dissertation, "Invisible Actors, Neglected History: Congolese Medical Workers in the Second World War," explores the roles and experiences of Congolese health workers recruited to provide medical care to the East African British Forces in East Africa, Madagascar, and Burma during World War II. Drawing on various sources, including oral history, visual and archival sources, it explores how Belgian colonial officials mobilized these medical workers for war services to keep the Belgian Congo relevant during the war. Specifically, I examine how wartime experiences proved pivotal for Congolese health workers' lives, careers. and trajectories. Trained as auxiliaries to function at the lower level in the colonial medical system, their duties, practices, and mobilities were circumscribed within the structures of the colonial state. Crossing national borders and entering the transnational landscape of the war was, therefore, unthinkable for these health workers. During the war, however, Congolese health workers navigated new geographies in Africa and beyond, breaking through established racial, ethnic, and social lines. At the same time, they embraced new bodies of medical knowledge and practices that emerged throughout the conflict.

My dissertation offers new insights into African health workers' critical yet overlooked role during World War II, challenging their marginalization in existing historiography. While wartime medical and nursing services have been increasingly studied, African health workers remain relegated to the footnotes of scholarly narratives, peripheral to the official history of the war. By foregrounding a medical perspective, my work offers a reinterpretation of Africans' involvement in the conflict, bridging gaps in the scholarship on Africa and World War II. Moreover, my dissertation reveals a transnational medical experience that often diverges from conventional colonial narratives. By doing so, my research aims for a more comprehensive approach that considers the various contexts, circumstances, and events that shaped and reshaped the experiences of African health workers.