Susan Iseyen is a PhD candidate at Princeton University’s history department. Her research interests encompass the anthropological and historical examination of diseases and how they intersect with science, medicine, and colonial governance in British West Africa, specifically Nigeria and Ghana. Her most recent works focus on the analysis of moving images and scientific research as part of the wider setting of twentieth-century medical culture. And she enjoys exploring questions of twentieth-century pan-Africanist and diasporic solidarity politics through the lens of the Nigeria-Biafra war, and how images of war bear witness to the visual dimension of humanitarian crises in postcolonial Africa. Her dissertation attempts a comparative study of leprosy and yaws diseases within colonial contexts in Nigeria and Ghana with close attention to the problems and circulation of medical knowledge, the mobilization of public health campaigns, and local initiatives.

Although an indigene of Akwa Ibom State in the coastal south-southern part of Nigeria, Susan was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honors in the Department of History and Strategic Studies, at the University of Lagos. She considers herself to be an enthusiastic student of social problems. This is what drives her to pursue solutions on social issues through ardent research. She desires to expend a greater part of her life changing distorted narratives in a sense of deep kinship to the region of the world she hails from and came of age. These factors have greatly influenced her deep connection to Africa and her past. Susan enjoys witnessing to many about the good news of God’s Kingdom and in her free time, she co-runs a not-for-profit that provides material support for indigent people affected by yaws and leprosy in Nigeria and Ghana and seeks grant support for civil war ex-combatants with disability in southeast Nigeria.