Current Graduate Students
Mikelle Antoine. Mikelle is an ABD currently conducting research in Ghana on the conversion of Asante women to Islam.
Menna Baumann. (FLAS recipient) Menna is completing course work and planning a dissertation on Igbo migration to Cameroon.
Benjamin Brühwiler. Benjamin is in his first year of graduate course work and planning a dissertation on labor, leisure, and masculinities in 20th century Tanzania.
Joseph Davey is finishing course work and planning a dissertation about Nigeria.
Marieme Diawara. Marieme is completing her dissertation research in Senegal on the social and medical dimensions of the Muslim pilgrimage, thanks to a Compton Peace Fellowship.
Lindsey Gish. (FLAS recipient) Lindsey is currently conducting dissertation research on trade along the Senegal River, specifically among female merchants, boat workers, and slaves between 1750 and 1880 with funding from a Fulbright Hays-DDRA fellowship.
Leslie Hadfield. Leslie returned in January 2009 from a year of Fulbright IIE funded research on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. She is currently finishing/working on her dissertation on the community development programs of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement (1969-1977).
Getahun Haile Mesfin. Getahun is currently completing his doctoral exams and preparing to do a dissertation on the Ethiopian Parliament under Haile Sellassie.
Mona Jackson. Mona has recently returned from her Fulbright in South Africa. She is writing a dissertation on the role of Adams College (KwaZulu-Natal) in molding an African middle class (1909-1948).
Ronald Jackson II. Ronald received the Michigan State University Enrichment Fellow. He is a first year graduate student interested in comparative history, focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Jill Kelly. Jill has completed her comprehensive examinations and is preparing for dissertation research on the gendering of ethnicity by rural Zulu women during the udlame (political violence) of the late 1980s/early 1990s KwaZulu-Natal.
Erin Lambert. Erin is a second year student looking at issues of health and healing in Northern Mozambique. She is currently on a FLAS for Swahili from MSU’s African Studies Center and is completing coursework.
Amanda Lewis. Amanda is currently completing course work and is planning a dissertation about East African environmental history.
Ndubueze Leonard Mbah. Leonard currently has a Harold G. Marcus Recruitment Fellowship to undertake a 5-year Ph.D. program in African History at Michigan State University. His major field is African History. He works under the supervision of Dr. Achebe Nwando, and his dissertation work is on “The Making of Men in Igboland: Changes in Igbo Masculinities 1880-1950.” His research interests involve the use of oral history in the study of masculinities, gender, slavery, religion and power in Central Igboland (Eastern Nigeria). He is taking minors in World History and Anthropology under the guardianship of Prof. Gordon Stewart and James Pritchett, respectively.
Winifred Uche Nwaefido. Winifred is a second year PhD Student of African History at Michigan State University. She is currently sponsored by the Harold G. Marcus Fellows Program, and works under the mentorship of Professor Nwando Achebe. Winifred's research interests are women, gender, oral history and religion in Africa. Her dissertation, “Igbo Women: From Indigenous Religion to Africanized Churches, 1900-1960,” investigates female hegemony in Igbo religion, gendered contestations within "mainline churches " and explores indigenous religious principles reincarnated in Africanized churches founded by Igbo women. She is currently taking minors in Anthropology and World History under the mentorship of Professors Mara Leichtman and Gordon Stewart.
Harry Odamtten. Harry is a dual-doctoral candidate in History as well as African-American & African Studies. He is a 2008 Compton Africa Peace Fellow, and recipient of the 2008 Special College of Arts and Letters Research Abroad Monies (SCRAM) and recently completed dissertation research in Ghana, West Africa, Basel Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Currently a Dissertation Research Fellow, he is writing his dissertation "History of Ideas: Pan-Africanism, the Black Atlantic and West African Intellectuals."
Bala Saho is finishing course work and planning a dissertation about The Gambia.
Assan Sarr. Assan is currently an ABD and was awarded a Compton Peace and Conflict Fellowship to conduct fieldwork for his dissertation. His dissertation will explore the ways in which practices of land tenure changed with the rise of the militant Islamic Revolution and the expansion of peanut production from the mid-nineteenth century, focusing on the transitional phase in the history of Gambia known as the protocolonial period. Beyond his dissertation, Assan is also interested in slavery and slave trading, and questions of power relationships in precolonial Senegambian societies.
Lumumba Shabaka. Lumumba received academic FLAS to study Mandinka (2007 and 2008) as well as summer FLAS to study Portuguese (2007), the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT). His focus is slavery, slave trade, Cape Verde and Upper Guinea Coast as well as Portuguese colonialism and decolonization in Lusophone Africa.