Joël Glasman is a historian of contemporary Africa and a professor at the University of Bayreuth. He works on the colonial and postcolonial state, the history of humanitarian action, and the theory and methods of global history.

His first book, Les corps habillés au Togo. Genèse coloniale des métiers de police (Paris 2015), examines the history of soldiers and policemen in Togo, a social group which eventually seized power in a coup in 1963.

His second book, Minimal Humanity. Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs (London 2020), explores the invention of ‘basic needs’, a notion that has become the cornerstone of humanitarian expertise. The book looks at how humanitarian experts quantified emergency relief work.

His latest book, Les humanités humanitaires. Petit manuel d’autodéfense à l’usage de volontaires (Paris 2023) aims to make social science research more accessible to aid workers. This book provides an introduction to key debates on humanitarian aid and neoliberalism, war, corruption, genocide, refugee camps, epidemics, racism, feminism, statistics and climate change. It was awarded the Research Prize of the Fondation of the French Red Cross 2024.

Another area of interest is the theory and methods of global history, including the use of Actor-Network-Theories (ANT) for global history (Techniken der Globalisierung. Global History meets Actor-Network Theory, co-edited with D. Gerstenberger, Bielefeld 2016), the benefits and limitations of global history.