The Role of the Diaspora in Africa's Resurgence

Friday, February 13, 2015 - 2:00pm - 3:30pm
639 Williams Hall

About the Speaker:

Prof. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Malawi and his master's from the University of London, where he studied African history and international relations. He holds a Ph.D. in economic history from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Zeleza's academic work has crossed traditional boundaries, ranging from economic and intellectual history to human rights, gender studies and diaspora studies. He has published more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, reviews, online essays and short stories and authored or edited 26 books, several of which have won international awards including Africa's most prestigious book prize, the Noma Award, for his books "A Modern Economic History of Africa" (1993) and "Manufacturing African Studies and Crises" (1997). His most recent books include "Barack Obama and African Diasporas: Dialogues and Dissensions" (2009) and "In Search of African Diasporas: Testimonies and Encounters" (2012), "Africa Resurgence, Domestic, Global and Diaspora Transformations" (2014).

Zeleza is currently the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Quinnipiac University, and prior to that he was the Director of the African Studies Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne; the Head, Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.