Adrita Mitra

Research Topic

Hope, Horror and Humanity: A transnational history of emergent forms of humanitarianism in the Congo Basin, 1880-1920

Adrita is a historian and visual studies scholar whose research explores how humanitarianism shaped the moral and visual worlds of the Congo Basin and its global diasporas. Her work traces the journeys of Congolese children who were moved across Belgium, Malta, Wales, the United States, and the Congo itself under the banner of humanitarian care—educated, exhibited, and transformed into symbols of colonial benevolence.

By following these transnational movements, Adrita’s research uncovers how humanitarian ideals became tools of empire, linking missionary education, racial uplift, and colonial governance to broader networks of Black internationalism. Drawing on archives and visual collections in both English and French, she reconstructs a history of humanitarianism that challenges conventional narratives of compassion and reform, showing how many of today’s humanitarian structures still echo the inequalities of their colonial pasts.

Adrita is the recipient of the ORISHA Scholarship, the Weiner-Anspach Doctoral Fellowship (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and additional research grants such as the Beit Travel Grant, the Collin Matthews Travel Grant and the Beit Maintenance Grant. From 2022 to 2024, she convened the Oxford Transnational and Global History Seminar, where she fostered interdisciplinary dialogue through exhibitions, film screenings, and experimental storytelling.

She holds a  Bachelor of Arts (hons) degree in History from Miranda House, University of Delhi and a Masters in International History from the Geneva Graduate Institute, which was supported by the Graduate Institute Scholarship, 2018-2020. 

Courses taught:

• FS_Transitions and Transformations in African History from c.1800-present
• FS- Imperial Pathologies:  Race, Medicine and Identity in the British Empire c.1720-c.1850

Select Presentations:

• La mise en scène de l’humanitarisme – la Belgique et le Congo -Royal Africa Museum, Belgium (2025)
• Hope, Horror and Humanity: Mapping Transnational Networks in the Congo, University of Cambridge (2024)
• The Many Forms of Humanitarianism in the Congo Basin, Columbia University (2024)
• New Intellectual Histories of the Global South (Oxford, 2022)  
•  ‘Images and Visual Rights’ for an event titled ‘Reckonings and Revisions’ hosted by the Albert Hirshman Centre for Democracy at The Graduate Institute, Geneva. (March, 2021)
• The League of Nations and the Question of Minorities in Interwar Europe, UN Library, Geneva (2020)