General news about the Center, its affiliated faculty, or related events.
The International Journal of African Historical Studies has launched the first issue of its 54th volume. A list of articles featured in this issue can be found here. To purchase a print copy, contact us.
We are very excited to welcome Professor Michael Woldemariam as the new Director of the African Studies Center. Professor Woldemariam’s teaching and research focus is on African security studies, with emphasis on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Prof. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in the journals Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal […]
Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Mustapha H. Kurfi, and Fallou Ngom Grassroots Ajami literacy has been historically high in the communities of West Africa. While often viewed through the lens of its religious historical origins, it is increasingly evident that the use of Ajami scripts in a variety of African languages extends far beyond religious and educational contexts. […]
Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Emily Williamson won the Cora du Bois Fellowship for dissertation completion on her project, “Folded Speech: An Ethics of Comings-and-Goings in an Accra Zongo.”
Conflict-related displacement is increasingly central in shaping land claims, property relations, and modes of belonging in Africa. The new African Studies Review Forum Land Disputes and Displacement in Post-Conflict Africa (2017, guest editors: Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Lotte Meinert) explores territoriality, belonging and boundary making in plural sites of public authority in African communities that are […]
Kristine Juul There is a widespread perception that mortgage is still rare in rural Africa, as most people lack formal titles to land. In a northern cattle-trading town of Senegal, I was surprised to find out that mortgaging was rather common, and people were losing their houses and farm plots. As elsewhere in rural Sahel, […]
The ASC Working Group on Land Mortgage is pleased to announce a new book, Land and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging, co-edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton (forthcoming in January 2022). The book argues that the mortgaging of land, a risky practice usually treated as just an economic and legal contract, needs a broader set of perspect
ASC Visiting Researcher Ivor Miller was recently featured in Cameroon for his work with the Cameroonian Minister of Arts and Culture to support the preservation of Ekpe cultural heritage, which plays an important role in the African diaspora in the Americas and Caribbean. Read more in The Guardian Post (in English, pg 9) and the Cameroon […]
The ASC Working Group on Land Mortgage is pleased to announce a new book, Land and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging, co-edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton (forthcoming in January 2022). The book argues that the mortgaging of land, a risky practice usually treated as just an economic and legal contract, needs a broader […]
The recording of our last Walter Rodney Lecture of the semester is now live on our YouTube Channel. Click here to watch Projecting Life: Boko, Learning and Religiosity on a University Campus in West Africa by Abdoulaye Sounaye.