Karin Pallaver is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna, Italy. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Cagliari in 2005. Since then, she has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in African History at the University of Bologna. She is currently interested in the social and economic history of 19th-century and early colonial East Africa. Her previous research has concentrated on pre-colonial African trade, pre-colonial and colonial currencies, 19th-century urbanism and German and British colonialism in East Africa.

Professor Pallaver is currently investigating the monetary history of colonial Kenya and Uganda. Her research is based on extensive archival research in Great Britain, Italy, Kenya and Tanzania. She is also part of the research project "Global collaboratory on the history of labour relations 1500-2000" at the Institute of Social History, University of Amsterdam.