An Overview of African Studies Staff and Faculty

1. An Overview of African Studies Staff and Faculty

2. New Student: Farah ABDI I recently graduated (in 2009) from UC San Diego with a B.S in General Biology. While at UC San Diego I participated as an undergraduate research assistant on a project in the field of molecular genetics as well as another which is still ongoing that is assessing the health needs/concerns of refugee women in San Diego County. I am originally from Somalia and speak Somali fluently. I hope to undertake the study of Arabic while a graduate student in the African Studies program. I am also in the Community Health Sciences masters program and some of my interests include the areas of conflict and instability, economic policies and globalization, as well as maternal and child health.

3. New Student: Ridwa ABDI I will be matriculating into the Community Health Sciences MPH/African Studies MA program this fall and upon completion of this program I hope to progress onto earning a PhD in epidemiology. I graduated from UC San Diego in 2009 with a B.S in General Biology. As Amgen Scholar at UCSD I gained hands-on laboratory research experience working on a project in the field of molecular biology. I am currently working on a research project aimed to assess the healthneeds/issues of refugee women in San Diego County. I am a native speaker of Somali and have lived in Somalia and Kenya for part of my childhood. My current research interests include infectious disease as well as maternal child health with a global focus.

4. New Student: George Njoroge George, originally from  Kenya, graduated from Florida State University with degree in International Affairs.  He later received his M.A. in History from the University of Florida.  His interests are combination of public health and historical anthropology in the context of mental health care along East Africa. 

5. New Student: Lily Hambartsoumian My name is Lily Hambartsoumian, I am Armenian, I was an undergraduate UCLA student in anthropology and russian literature, I love to read long novels, but in my career i want to make documentary films about developing economies in Africa and else where in the world.

6. New Student: Alex Laverty I grew up in Europe as the son of a US Army officer and this time abroad has significantly contributed to my need to always be on the move, my love of soccer, and the desire to experience new cultures. As an undergraduate I had the opportunity to study abroad for six months at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. The research I assisted with and the classes I took deepened my passion and desire to further study African history, politics and culture. I graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2008 with a BA in International Relations with a focus on Africa. After graduation I interned for several months at Trans-Africa and Human Rights Watch in Washington DC where I gained valuable insight into the workings of two very different non-governmental organizations. I am currently in South Africa for the World Cup and to explore parts of Southern Africa that I wasn't able to previously. I look forward to returning home to California in order to continue immersing myself in Africa. 

7. New Student: Farah ABDI New Student: Alex Laverty

8. New Student: Adaeze Nnamani My name is Adaeze Nnamani. I had my undergraduate degree at Illinois State University. I majored in Political Science and minored in Economics. I am a Nigerian by nationality and I am really passionate about Africa and it's development. I have a strong faith that a miracle will take place in my generation that will lift Africa up from the shackles of poverty and corruption to emerge as a continent contributing her own quota to the world. This is the reason i want to spend 2 years studying and laying my hands on every and anything I can on Africa. 

9. New Student: Cynthia Ugwibe Hello, my name is Cynthia Ugwuibe and I am excited to be a part of the African Studies Department. Although I spent my early childhood in Nigeria, I have lived in Dallas, Texas for the majority of my life. In 2009 I graduated from Duke Universitywith a BA in Public Policy Studies. My time at Duke sparked my interest in African politics, policymaking, rule of law and globalization issues. I hope to study these subjects in greater detail at UCLA. Last fall as the Africa Policy & Advocacy Intern with TransAfrica Forum, an influential foreign policy organization in Washington D.C., I was able to gain hands-on experience into the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. In my spare time, I enjoy running, reading, cooking and socializing with people. I look forward to meeting you in person!

10. Edward (“Ned”) Alpers (History) Ned Alpers received his Ph.D. from SOAS, University of London. Before UCLA he taught at University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Also spent a Fulbright year at the Somali National University in Mogadishu. Research: political economy of international trade in eastern Africa Slavery, Gender, and Indian Ocean World he former of Chair of UCLA’s History Department. He has served as President of the African Studies Association (1994) and Chair of its National Program Committee (2001)

11. Edward Alpers’ Publications

12. Andrew Apter(History and Anthropology) Director of the African Studies Center Apter received his Ph.D. from Yale and taught at the University of Chicago before coming to UCLA Research Interests West Africa (Yoruba, Nigeria) and the African Diaspora (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba), History of Anthropology, Social Theory. Andrew Apter works on ritual, memory, and indigenous knowledge as well as colonial culture, commodity fetishism and state spectacle. His historical ethnography of Yoruba hermeneutics informs his research on “syncretism” and creolization in West Africa and the Americas.

14. Zambia 2008 Refugee Camp Project

15. Apter & Thomas with African Studies colleagues in UC Santa Barbara

16. Ruby Bell-GamAfrican Studies Bibliographer Ruby Bell-Gam teaches at the department of Information Studies Is the custodian and developer of UCLA’s Young Research Library’s African Studies collection She travels to Africa for meetings, outreach and library acquisitions

17. Sheila BreedingAfrican Studies Center Administrator Sheila is the person who sends all the numerous emails about campus events and off-campus events Very knowledgeable about current events in Africa, she keeps the community posted and is the central nodes for African Studies students Sheila receives the International Institute’s Excellence in Service Award 2006-7

18. Judith Carney(Geography) Professor of Geography Ph.D. Berkeley (1986) Research Focus: West Africa; gender, environment, and agricultural development; African Diaspora

19. Judith Carney, Winner of the Herskovits Award (2002) for her book Black Rice

20. Donald J. Cosentino (World Arts and Culture) Professor of Culture and Performance (Folklore, Literature, Visual and Material Arts, Popular Culture, African and Afro-Caribbean Studies). Joined WAC in 1988. Cosentino has done extensive fieldwork on African and diasporic cultures in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Haiti. He is the author of "Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: Tradition and Invention in Mende Story Performance" (Cambridge, 1982) and "Vodou Things: The Art of Pierrot Barra and Marie Cassaise" (University of Mississippi Press, 1998). He is the editor and chief writer of the award winning catalogue for "The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou" (1995), a traveling exhibition he curated for the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Cosentino has been co-editor of African Arts magazine, published by the UCLA African Studies Center, since 1988. Ph.D., African Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

21. Donald J. Cosentino (World Arts and Culture)

22. Deborah DaudaGraduate Assistant, African Studies IDP MAAS Student Started working in 2009 as the African Studies IDP Graduate Assistant and Magda Yamamoto’s right hand She is a professional dancer and is featured in Shakira’s video Waka Waka!

23. Professor Pascaline DupasEconomics Department Received her Ph.D. from l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) Teaches Labor Economics, Development Economics and Public Health Care Issues Most of her research has been in rural Kenya, studying subjects such as Teenagers Responses to HIV Risk Information and Malaria prevention strategies. She also has worked in Morocco on households’ responses to access to running water

24. Christopher Ehret(History), with his colleagues in Lamu in 2007

25. Christopher Ehret Specialty: Early Africa; Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Northeastern Africa, Sahara Historical Linguistic Methods in History Publications: The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 ; A Comparative Historical Reconstruction of Proto-Nilo-Saharan; An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400. ….

26. In Memoriam:Teshome H. Gabriel(1939-2010)(Film, Theater and Television Department) Teshome H. Gabriel has written extensively on memory and the cinema, theories of Third Cinema, on the aesthetics of nomadic thought in cinema, and on weaving and the digital in developing countries. His books include Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged (coeditor with Hamid Naficy) and Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetic of Liberation. He is the founding director of several journals, including Emergencies and Ethiopian Fine Arts Journal, and is currently at work on a collection of essays for publication.

27. Sondra Hale Anthropology Keywords: Africa, Cultural anthropology, Gender, Labor, Middle East, Politics, Social anthropology Research Interests Gender; political economy; social movements; postcolonial and cultural studies; nationalism and colonialism; diaspora; aesthetics; Islam/Islamism; Middle East and Africa (mainly Sudan and Eritrea).

28. Robert Hill(History) Research Interests Afro-American and Caribbean History Selected Publications Robert A. Hill, Editor in Chief, "The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Volume IX, Africa for the Africans, 1921--1922" (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995) Robert A. Hill, Compiler and Editor,"The FBI's RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States during World War I" (Ithaca, N. Y.: Northeastern University Press, 1995)

29. Edward (“Ed”) Keller (Political Science) Keller is Chair of the Political Science Dept. Edmond J. Keller is professor of political science, Director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center-Africa and former Director of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at the University of California-Los Angeles. He specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on Africa. He was awarded the Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association in 2008

30. Edward Keller’s Publications Keller is the author of two monographs: Education, Manpower and Development: The Impact of Educational Policy in Kenya (1980) and Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People’s Republic (1988). Professor Keller has also written more than 50 articles on African and African American politics, and has co-edited three books: Afro-marxist Regimes: Ideology and Public Policy (with Donald Rothchild, 1987); South Africa in Southern Africa: Domestic Change and International Conflict (with Louis Picard, 1989), and Africa in the New International Order: Rethinking State Sovereignty and Regional Security (with Donald Rothchild, 1996).

31. Michael Lofchie (Political Science) Former Director of the African Studies Center from 1978 to 1989.  Professor Lofchie teaches undergraduate and graduate introductions to comparative government, and offers graduate seminars on the political economy of Africa and structural adjustment. His research focuses on the politics of economic reform in Africa. His book The Policy Factor: Agricultural Performance in Kenya and Tanzania (Lynne Rienner, 1989) explores agricultural policy and urban bias in Kenya and Tanzania. Professor Lofchie's work has become an influential source for scholars and policy makers seeking to understand the dynamics of famine in Africa. He has worked as a consultant to U.S.A.I.D. and World Bank projects and is developing a large web-based project on teaching materials for 100 of the world's less commonly taught languages.

32. Received her PhD from Michigan States University Specializes in Western African History (Economic and Cultural History; women’s history; Islamic law and institutions) First Book on Caravan Trade Ghislaine Lydon (History)

33. Lydon with the Dean of Letters of University of Bamako, the head of the Arabic language department and the owner of a private library in Timbuktu (2009)

34. Steven Nelson (Art History) • Steven Nelson, Associate Professor of African and African American art history and Chair of the UCLA Graduate Council, came to UCLA in 2000. Professor Nelson is a Contributing editor for African Arts and former Reviews Editor for Art Journal. He is also the author of From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture in and out of Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2007), which was awarded the 2009 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award Honorable Mention from the Society of Architectural Historians.

35. Steven Nelson in Dakar at the 2008 Biennial

36. Steven Nelson (Art History) • He is also the co-editor of the exhibition catalogue New Histories (The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1996) and has published, among other things, numerous items focused on the contemporary and historic arts, architecture and urbanism of Africa and its diasporas, African American art history, and queer studies. Professor Nelson is currently working on a new book, entitled Dakar: The Making of an African Metropolis. Professor Nelson earned his BA in studio art from Yale University and his AM and PhD in art and architectural history from Harvard University.

37. Steven Nelson in Dakar, 2005

38. Steven Nelson Publications

39. Deepak Lal (Economics) • Keywords: Africa, Economic Theory, Economics, Globalization, India, Indian Ocean diaspora, Politics,Economics Development; and International Economics. • Research: • Political economy of poverty, equity and growth; culture and development; economic liberalization.

40. Françoise Lionnet French and Francophone Studies • Keywords: Africa, Francophone Africa, Francophone Literature, Gender, Humanities, Literature, Middle East, Near East, Politics, Post-Colonial African Literature • Professor Lionnet has held fellowships and grants from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the SSRC, the United Nations Fund (UNFPA), the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California-Irvine, the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the NEH. • She directed the NEH/Northwestern Summer Institute in French Cultural Stdudies in 1995. Her research interests include comparative and Francophone literatures, postcolonial studies, autobiography, and race and gender studies

41. Alain Mabanckou (French and Francophone Studies Dept.) • Professor of Francophone literature at UCLA • Author of numerous works of fiction and semi-fiction • Most recent book “Black Bazaar” (Paris, Editions Seuil, 2009) • Winner of the Prix Renaudot in 2003 for Memoire d’un Porc-epic.

42. Edith Mukudi OmwamiEducation • Research Interests • Access, participation and funding of education; Nutrition and education linkages, Education policy and practice; gender and education; African education • Recent Publications • Mukudi, E. (2004). "The Effects of User-fees policy on Attendance Rates among Kenyan Elementary Schoolchildren," International Review of Education 50 (5- 6): 447-461. • Mukudi, E. (2004). "Education for All: a Framework for addressing the persisting illusion for the Kenyan context," International Journal of Educational Development 24 (3): 231- 240. • Mukudi, E. (2003). "Nutrition Status, Education Participation, and School Achievement

43. Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts & Allen Roberts (World Arts and Cultures) Mary "Polly" Nooter Roberts (PhD Art History, Columbia University) and Al Roberts (PhD Anthropology, University of Chicago) are Professors of Culture and Performance in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC). Polly was Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Fowler Museum at UCLA prior to joining the WAC faculty last year. The Roberts both conducted lengthy dissertation research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and they undertake research, write, produce major traveling museum exhibitions together, and sometimes co-teach as well. Their exhibition "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History" (1996) traveled to the Smithsonian and four other museums, while its accompanying book won the College Art Association's Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship as the first Africanist book to be so honored.

44. Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts & Allen Roberts(World Arts and Cultures) Their more recent exhibition, "A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal" (2003), traveled to six museums and was hailed by _The New York Times_ as one of the ten best of the year on any topic seen at any U.S. museum. Saint in the City Winner Herskovits Award as the best African Studies book of 2003 and the Arnold Rubin Prize as the best volume on African art of 2001-200

45. Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts teaches WAC courses on Curating Cultures, Inscribing Meaning, and Body Politics--all with explicit African content);Al Roberts offers WAC courses on Visual Cultures, Space and Place, and a new Intro to African Religions.

46. Al Roberts (WAC) and Senegalese friends at Touba, Senegal

47. Al and Polly Roberts and the architect/marabout Omar Sy from the "Straw Mosque" that they have documented for 15 years outside of Djourbel

48. Polly Roberts with artist Moussa Tine in the middle and research associate Ousmane Gueye in Senegal

49. Al Roberts lecturing on HIV/Aids and Art in Africa

50. Russell Schuh (Linguistics) • Research Interests • All my research and publication is descriptive and historical comparative work on African languages. My specialty is the Chadic family of languages, spoken in Niger, northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and east-central Chad Republic. My concentration has been on languages of the West Branch of Chadic, which are all spoken in northern Nigeria and which include Hausa, the largest natively spoken language in sub-Saharan Africa.