CAS Community Spotlight: Pazeni Sauti Africa Choir and Eric Murianki (Director)

CAS Community Spotlight Pazeni Sauti Africa Choir and Eric Murianki (Director) Eric Murianki is Director of Pazeni Sauti and a graduate research assistant at the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship (CAME). Previously, he studied at Kenyatta University, Kenya. He is now completing his PhD in Music Education through the UF School of Music. Pazeni Sauti […]

Faculty Feature: Dr. Brian Child

Associate professor in the Department of Geography and the Center for African Studies Dr. Brian Child is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Center for African Studies. His work focuses on wildlife economics and governance related to community-based conservation, park management, and private conservation. He has extensive experience as a researcher and practitioner […]

Faculty Feature: Benjamin Soares

Professor in the Department of Religion Benjamin Soares is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in Africa whose research focuses on religious life from the early 20th century to the present. In recent work, he has looked at connections between changing modalities of religious expression, different modes of belonging, and emergent social imaginaries in […]

Faculty Feature: Fatimah Tuggar

Fatimah Tuggar | Associate professor in Art & Art History Interdisciplinary artist Tuggar was born in Nigeria and raised there and in the United Kingdom. She has studied, lived, and worked in the US since the late ’80s. Her work uses technology as both medium and subject to serve as metaphors for power dynamics. She […]

Research Tutorial at Home Student Feature: Lauren Gilbertsen

Research Tutorial At Home with Dr. Rose Lugano Documentation of for a Kitaita (Kidaw’ida)-English Dictionary: Final Review in Preparation for publication The objective of the research was to conduct a thorough review of collected data for the English-Kitaita/Kitaita-English dictionary in preparation for publication. This entailed identifying missing data and entering as it was availed, editing […]

Undergraduate Research Tutorial at Home with Dr. Janzen

Glimpses of Haiti in West Africa, 1900-1920 Philip Janzen Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Florida In 2016, I was in Ibadan, Nigeria, reading through the Herbert Macaulay collection at the University of Ibadan. Macaulay (1864-1946), was an early Nigerian nationalist. He corresponded widely, and seems to have preserved every scrap of paper that […]

Dr. Child Selected for Honorary Position as African Councilor for IUCN

Dr. Brian Child was asked to stand to be one of four African Councilors for IUCN by the African Community Leaders Forum and others. Following the recent global elections at the World Conservation Congress in Marseilles, Dr. Child was elected for this honorary position. The Council sets forth strategic direction and policy for the Union. Given […]

New Faculty Feature: Rujeko Dumbutshena

Rujeko Dumbutshena Assistant Professor, School of Theatre & Dance Please join the Center for African Studies in welcoming Rujeko Dumbutshena as Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance. Rujeko is a Zimbabwean-born dancer, pedagogue, and performer who specializes in neo-traditional and contemporary African dance. She comes to UF from University of Washington, Seattle […]

Marit Østebø Named 2021-2024 Term Professor

Congratulations to Dr. Marit Østebø, recently named a 2021-2024 Term Professor at University of Florida. These three-year professorships were created by UF to recognize faculty who have established a distinguished record of research and scholarship that is expected to lead to continuing distinction in their field.

Introducing Dr. Rose Lugano as Programs in African Languages Coordinator

The Program in African Languages (PAL) is one of the Center for African Studies’ central components in its mission to work with the rest of the University in promoting Africa-related studies on the campus and beyond. In addition to undergraduate education, the CAS promotes and supports graduate studies as essential part for the development of a continuing […]

CAS Welcomes Dr. David Rifkind to UF

David Rifkind will join the UF faculty July 1 as Director of the School of Architecture after 14 years at Florida International University. Trained as an architect and as an architectural historian, David studies urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia from the late nineteenth century to the present. His current book project, Modern Ethiopia: Architecture, Urbanism, and […]

Faculty Spotlight: Luise White

Dr. Luise White spent the past year researching and writing as a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. Her newest book will focus on white soldiers in the Rhodesian Army, continuing some of the issues that grew out of her last book about the Rhodesian state. In her new book, she has used the papers […]

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Oliver Walther

Dr. Olivier Walther joins the Center for African Studies this year as a Visiting Associate Professor. He is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark, the Africa Editor for the Journal of Borderlands Studies and has a long history of collaboration in research with organizations such as the World Food Programme and the OECD. His research […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Hunt Davis

Dr. Richard Hunt Davis, Jr. is Emeritus Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Florida. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the African Studies Quarterly (ASQ), which is hosted at UF. Dr. Davis was born in Highland Park, Michigan in 1939. Though born in Michigan, growing up Davis’ family moved around quite a […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Rene Lemarchand

Dr. René Lemarchand is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and African Studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Lemarchand was born in France in 1932 and first came to the US as a Fulbright scholar at Southwestern College (now known as Rhodes College) in 1951. In 1954 he enrolled in UCLA’s Political Science PhD program, […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Goran Hyden

Dr. Goran Hyden is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and African Studies at the University of Florida. Significantly attracted by UF’s Center for African Studies, Dr. Hyden first came to UF in 1986. Over several decades his research began focused on rural cooperatives and public administration to the political economy of the peasantry to democratization […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Anita Spring

Dr. Anita Spring is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, African Studies, Latin American Studies, and Women’s Studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Spring first came to UF in 1973 and her research expertise spans a wide variety of subjects including Cultural, Applied, and Medical Anthropology, International Agricultural Development, Food Security, Entrepreneurship and Micro-enterprises, Women/Gender in […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Barbara McDade Gordon

Barbara McDade Gordon, is a faculty member in the Geography Department; and affiliate of the Center for African Studies, and African American Studies Program. Upon her retirement from UF in May 2016 she received the distinction of Emeritus(a) by a unanimous departmental vote. She began her academic career in 1990 at UF which she described […]

Faculty Spotlight: Nancy Rose Hunt

In Fall 2016, Nancy Rose Hunt joined the University of Florida as Professor of History & African Studies. We are pleased to report that she recently received the 2016 Martin A. Klein Prize recognizing the most distinguished book in African history (from the American Historical Association). A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo (Duke University Press) involved […]

Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Aida A. Bamia

Our first Emeritus Professor featured in the news bulletin, Dr. Aida A. Bamia is Emeritus Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at University of Florida. Dr. Bamia first joined UF in 1985, one of the pioneering professors contributing to the development of the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) Interdisciplinary program at UF. A citizen […]

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