Emily Lynn Osborn's first book, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule (Ohio, 2011) is a history of gender and state-craft in Guinea-Conakry. She is currently working on a book on technology transfer and diffusion in West Africa that focuses on artisans who work with aluminum; she has also published articles on colonial intermediaries, the history of containerization in West Africa, and the role of the color red in the slave trade.