Past, Present and FUTURE Kristofer Allerfeldt talks to Seth Dellow By Fergus Byrne
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n this month’s audio interview, Seth Dellow spoke to Kristofer Allerfeldt, a Professor of American history at the University of Exeter. Kristofer specialises in modern slavery, immigration, the Ku Klux Klan and organised crime and in his interview with Seth he covered topics ranging from people trafficking to quantum computing. His route to becoming a professor of history was not traditional by any means. Brought up on the edge of Dartmoor, Kristofer’s father was a farmer and his mother a portrait painter. He describes them as ‘complete and utter opposites’ but ‘a fantastic combination together.’ After university in Bristol, where he studied advertising and marketing, he recalls how ‘for one reason or another, I left and went out on trawlers and did all sorts of the Jack London type stuff ’ before moving for a spell to San Francisco. However, instead of then following an academic route to where he is today, he came back home and spent the next twenty years farming. In fact, he was still farming when he did his degree in history, followed by a Ph.D. in history, and even continued after he started teaching at Exeter University. It was a lifestyle that left him with a deep love of animals, especially dogs. Despite initially studying Russian with someone he describes as ‘Devon’s last Stalinist’ he changed tack to study American history and that is where his interest in immigration came from. ‘I became interested in the idea of immigration history’ he tells Seth ‘and particularly what changed the
12 The Marshwood Vale Magazine January 2022 Tel. 01308 423031
