Alumna Priscilla Adipa (sociology ‘17) has published two short stories: “Hope upon Hope” on Afritondo (afritondo.com/afritondo/hope-upon-hope) and “The Woman Across the Street” on AfricanWriter.com (africanwriter.com/priscilla-adipa-thewoman-across-thestreet/).
Chernoh Bah (T. H. Breen Graduate Fellow, history) convened the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies hybrid conference, “Global Perspectives on the Prison and Systems of Punishment,” in April. He also presented a paper, “Death, Disease, and Forced Labor in Freetown Prison, 1914-1925.”
Adia Benton (anthropology) received a 2021/2022 Alice B.Kaplan Institute fellowship. As part of the fellowship program, she led a Kaplan conversation entitled “The Fever Archive: Race, Risk, and Survival in the Wake of Sierra Leone’s Ebola Outbreak.”
Alumna Jean Hunleth (anthropology 2011) coauthored an article, “Care at the Gate,” on the Anthropology News website, June 23, 2021. She is currently Assistant Professor of Surgery and Anthropology in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Congratulations to PAS’s first-ever Swahili FLTA, Seline Okeno, who has graduated from Ohio University with an MA in applied linguistics.
Will Reno (political science) and alumnus Jahara Matisek (political science, 2018) published a chapter, “African Militaries and Contemporary Warfare” in Rethinking Civil Military Relations in Africa: Beyond the Coup D’état, edited by political science alumni Moses Khisa (2016) and Christopher Day (2012), published Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc, 2022.
Rebecca Rwakabukoza (history graduate student) is a coconvener for monthly dialogues at African Feminist Initiative (AFI), a global platform for feminist scholars and activists to engage in interdisciplinary collaborative knowledge production in and about Africa and its diaspora. The AFI is housed by Pennsylvania State University.
Alumna Aili Tripp (political science ’90) was a cohost of the symposium in memory of Professor M. Crawford Young at the University of WisconsinMadison, April 1-2, 2022. Among the many participants at that symposium were former PAS directors Richard Joseph and Will Reno.
Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem (ISITA director and political science) presented the 32nd Bradford Morse Distinguished lecture, “Islam and the Post-colonial State in Africa: The Formation of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (1960–2022),” at the Boston University African Studies Center on April 14. He also presented a version of the same paper at the virtual conference, Religion and Democracy on the African Continent: Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Possibilities, hosted by the University of Virginia Democracy Initiative’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab in May.
Alumnus Jim Sanders (history ’80) writes “Through a letter-writing campaign aimed at both public and private officials, I have endeavored to draw attention to the obscure world of emerging market, (EM), bond deals and their impact on Africa. Part of the effort entails urging financial journalists to tap their muckraker heritage and expose the murkier side of EM bonds. Shining a light on this dimension of global finance requires media to shift its focus from how EM bond offerings benefit Western investors, and investment banks, to the consequences of them for African economies, governments and people. With $7 trillion in debt to refinance this year, emerging market economies are likely to experience a level of stress that may threaten governments. The pandemic, supply chain crisis, China’s commercial real estate bubble, and war in Ukraine are accelerating the current debt crisis.”
Alumnus Alexander Thurston (religious studies ’13) presented a paper, “The Politics of Writing Sokoto’s History in Independence-era Nigeria,” at the virtual conference, Religion and Democracy on the African Continent: Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Possibilities, hosted by the University of Virginia Democracy Initiative’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab in May. He has also published several articles in the national press: “West Africa: Rethinking the International Response to Coups,” The Africa Report, February 9, 2022, https://www.theafricareport.com/175263/westafrica-rethinking-the-international-response-to-coups/; “After a Fourth Coup in West Africa, It’s Time to Rethink International Response, The Conversation (Johannesburg), January 31, 2022, https://theconversation.com/after-a-fourth-coup-inwest-africa-its-time-to-rethinkinternational-response-175991; and “The Sahel’s Oasis of Stability Isn’t Really Stable, Inkstick, March 3, 2021 https://inkstickmedia.com/the-sahels-oasis-of-stabilityisnt-really-stable/.
Chris Urdy copublished two articles, “Heterogeneity, Measurement Error, and Misallocation: Evidence from African Agriculture,” in The Journal of Political Economy 129(1), 2021, doi.org/10.1086/711369;and “Agricultural Technology in Africa,” in Journal of Economic Perspectives 36(1), 2022: 33–56.
Alumnus Ariel Zellman (political science ’13) coauthored “Uneasy Lies the Crown: External Threats to Religious Legitimacy and Interstate Dispute Militarization,” in Security Studies 31(1),, 2022:152-182, doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2022.2038664. Zellman is a faculty member of the Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Congratulations to PAS faculty recipients of 2022 fellowships and honors
Wendy Griswold (sociology) is one of four Northwestern faculty elected to the 2022 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sean Hanretta (history) received a NEH fellowship to work on his book, “Dying and Marrying Muslim in Ghana: Ethics of the Body, Secrecy, and Privacy.”
Amanda Logan (anthropology) named to the 2022 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows.
Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem (ISITA director and political science) awarded a New York University Abu Dhabi Senior Humanities Research Fellowship in its Arab World program.
Send stories and news items to laray.denzer@northwestern.edu so that PAS can share them with the Africanist community at Northwestern and beyond.