Tariq Rahman Lahore is an ancient city. Lahore is a megacity. Though I can think of nothing more cliché to say about an Asian city than describing it as a “land of contrasts,” I do find the tension between Lahore’s history and present to be a productive one to think with when it comes to […]
The Diaspora Studies Initiative of the African Studies Center partnered with the Evergreen program of the Boston University Metropolitan College for the seminar series “Migration and Remittances in the FinTech Era.” Dr. Daivi Rodima-Taylor led the seminars “Sending Money Back Home: Migration from the Global South” and “Financial Technology and Informal Economies in Africa” that […]
The Boston University NEH Ajami project, led by Prof. Fallou Ngom (PI) and Dr. Daivi Rodima-Taylor (Project Manager), is pleased to share resources developed in the course of its three-year research engagement funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project, Ajami Literacy and the Expansion of Literacy and Islam: The Case of West […]
BU Affiliated Researcher Susanne Mueller recently published a commentary with the Italian Institute for International Political Studies entitled “Ethnicity and Violence: New Dynamics in Kenya’s Elections?” and an article in The Washington Post entitled, “Why did Kenyans elect Ruto as president?”
The BU ASC Working Group on Land Mortgage is pleased to report that the new book, Land and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging, co-edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton, was published in February 2022 by Berghahn Books. The mortgaging of land, a risky practice usually treated as just an economic and legal contract, has […]
Visiting Researcher Lori De Lucia has been awarded several postdoctoral fellowships pertaining to her research on race and slavery in early modern Sicily and the wider Sahelian-Mediterranean world. Through 2021-22, these include a fellowship at the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Transformations at Harvard University, the Heinz Heinen Fellowship at the Bonn Center for Dependency […]
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. […]
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