Directory
Program Head
Cheryl Sterling
- Program Head, African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-8425
Email: czs796@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African Literature, African Diaspora Literature, Post-Colonial Theory, Aesthetics, Transnational Studies, Gender, Social and Cultural Movements in Brazil
Core Faculty
Clemente Abrokwaa
- Associate Teaching Professor of African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-5257
Email: cka1@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Science and technology in Africa, Education in Africa, Globalization, African politics, Multiculturalism, Economic development in Africa, Peace and conflict studies
Gabeba Baderoon
- Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-2372
Email: gxb26@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Representations of Islam in Africa, African feminism, South African literature, Race and Sexuality, Slavery in South Africa, Food studies, Visual art in South Africa
Abigail Celis
- Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies and African Studies
Email: aqc5966@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, Visual arts and cinema, Literary arts, Museums and repatriation, Diaspora studies
Neelima Jeychandran
- Visiting Assistant Professor of African Studies and Asian Studies
Email: nuj47@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Afro-Asian Connections, Indian Ocean World Cultures, Oceanic Humanities, Africana Religions, Colonialism, Memory and Embodied Practices, African Material Cultures, Postcolonial Ethnographies, Multimodal Methodologies, Digital Humanities
Busi Makoni
- Associate Teaching Professor
Phone: (814) 867-3553
Email: sud17@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Language socialization, Language ideology, Language and law, Language policy and planning, Discourse analysis, Multimodal translanguaging
Sinfree Makoni
- Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and African Studies
Phone: (814) 863-2431
Email: sbm12@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Language policy and planning, Security studies, Language and health, Southern epistemologies and ontologies
Richard Mbih
- Assistant Teaching Professor of African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-9496
Email: ram6096@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Agro-pastoralism and food security, environmental change and society, natural resource conflicts, political ecology, sustainability, Sub-Saharan Africa, and international development
Kidane Mengisteab
- Professor of African Studies and Political Science
Phone: (814) 863-5815
Email: kim3@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Security in the Horn of Africa, Extractive industries and commercial farming in Africa
Abderrahim Ouarghidi
- Assistant Teaching Professor of African Studies and Anthropology
Email: auo45@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Development and Sustainability, Community-Based Natural Resources and Management, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Agricultural and Pastoral Systems, Participatory Methods
Bronwen Powell
- Assistant Professor of Geography, African Studies, and Anthropology
Phone: (814) 865-1187
Email: bxp15@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Biodiversity and Nutrition, Wild and forest foods, Dietary patterns and dietary diversity, Traditional food systems, Applied research for improved policy and practice
Edwin Sabuhoro
- Assistant Professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and African Studies
Email: eps5479@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Sustainability, Well-Being, and Livelihoods, Ecotourism and Community Based Tourism, Integrated Conservation and Development, Outdoor Recreation and Nature Based-Tourism, Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Management, Parks, and Protected Area Planning and Management in East Africa
Michelle Sikes
- Assistant Professor of Kinesiology, African Studies, and History
Phone: (814) 865-8697
Email: mxs1600@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African sport history, Anti-apartheid and anti-colonial transnational activism, Social and political histories of South Africa and Kenya
Olusegun Soetan
- Assistant Teaching Professor of African Studies
Email: oqs5131@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African screen media, African language pedagogy, Indigenous science and technology in Africa, Medical humanities, African Traditional Religion, African feminism, Visual arts and cinema, Literary arts, Diaspora studies
Christopher Tounsel
- Assistant Professor of History and African Studies
- Catherine Shultz Rein Early Career Professor
Phone: (814) 865-1367
Email: cut70@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Sudan and South Sudan, Christianity, Race
Affiliate Faculty
Ebony Coletu
- Assistant Professor of African American Studies, English, and African Studies
Phone: (814) 863-2343
Email: euc179@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Rhetoric of Application Forms; Funding Infrastructures, Biography, Transnational American Studies in the Middle East and Africa, African Diaspora Studies/African Studies
Jose Cossa
- Associate Professor of Lifelong Learning and Adult Education and African Studies
Email: jxc6421@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Comparative and International Education, Adult, online and distance education, Power dynamics in negotiation, uBuntu and Cosmo-uBuntu as (exterior to modernity) theorizing, Global justice and de-colonializing, de-bordering, de-peripherizing, and de-centering the world, African renaissance, and, International development
Alicia Decker
- Associate Professor of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and African Studies
Phone: (814) 867-3561
Email: acdecker@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Gender and militarism, War and political violence, Ugandan postcolonial history, African women’s history, Global feminisms
William Dewey
- Associate Professor of Art History
Email: wjd14@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African, African Diaspora, and Oceanic art
Francis Dodoo
- Liberal Arts Professor of Sociology, Demography, and African Studies
Phone: (814) 863-2240
Email: duf2@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Research capacity building in Sub-Saharan Africa; Demographic and health outcomes associated with urban poverty; Intergenerational transfer of norms governing the gendered stratification of sexuality; The male role and the intersection of gender and power on fertility decision making; and Africans and other black immigrants in the United States.
Kristina G. Douglass
- Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-2937
Email: kdouglass@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Human-environment interaction, anthropology and archaeology of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, coastal and island archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, historical ecology, extinction, migration, ethnogenesis
J. Marlena Edwards
- Assistant Professor of African American Studies and History
Phone: (814) 865-8719
Email: jue328@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African diaspora, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
Johannes Fedderke
- Professor of International Affairs and African Studies
Phone: (814) 867-2793
Email: jwf15@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Determinants of economic growth, Institutions and economic growth, Deep roots of economic development, Development economics, The economics of art, Formal methods of modelling social science relationships
Larry Gorenflo
- PROFESSOR, ELEANOR R. STUCKEMAN CHAIR IN DESIGN
Phone: (814) 863-5337
Email: lgorenflo@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Biodiversity Conservation, Cultural Ecology, East Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia
Ephraim Govere
- Director, Soil Research Cluster Lab and Lecturer in African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-1143
Email: emg900@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
The role of professionals in developing countries, Analytical laboratory capacity building and development of novel environmental methods of analysis
Michael Jacobson
- Professor of Forest Resources
- Chair of Forest Ecosystem Management Program
- Extension Specialist
Phone: (814) 865-3994
Email: mgj2@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Water energy food nexus, Bioenergy, Sustainable forestry, Forest economics, finance, policy and taxes, Agroforestry and non timber forest products, Gas taxation, forest certification and incentive programs, Private forestry, International forestry, Liberi
Gregory Jenkins
- Professor of Meteorology
Phone: (814) 865-0479
Email: gsj1@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Atmospheric/Air chemistry, Climate, Tropical meteorology
RoseMary Jolly
- Professor, Weiss Chair of the Humanities in Literature and Human Rights
Phone: (814) 865-1188
Email: rjj14@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Sub-Saharan African literatures, narratives of violence and reconciliation, the interface between the critical medical humanities and sub-Saharan African health frameworks, the integration of gender-based violence prevention and treatment into HIV/AIDS pr
Fabienne Kanor
- Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Phone: (814) 865-1492
Email: quk165@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Visual Arts and cinema, Literature, Francophone African Theater and Art performance, Race, Migration / Immigration in French West Indies and Sub-Saharan Africa, Slave-Trade and its Memories in Arts, African Diaspora, Trauma Studies
Maha Marouan
- Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African Studies
Phone: (814) 867-4269
Email: mzm24@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism, African Diaspora Studies, Transnational Feminism, African Feminism, Comparative Racialization, Religious Studies, Immigration Studies, African and African Diaspora Women’s Literature in English, French, Arabic, and Spanish, Religions of Africa and the African Diaspora, Islamic Africa, Race and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, Immigration, Race, Gender, and Belonging
Mare Sarr
- Associate Professor of International Affairs and African Studies
Phone: (814) 867-2979
Email: mxs2566@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (Climate Change and Biodiversity Conservation), Institutional Change and Development in Africa, Political Economy with a focus on resource-rich countries
Yael Warshel
- Assistant Professor of Telecommunications and African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-3717
Email: yzw5370@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Comparative and Global African, Middle Eastern, and Saharan Media (including Systems, Ethics, Practices, Uses, Reception, Effects and Contexts), Peace Communication and Social Change, Children and Ethnopolitical Conflict, Ethnography of Violence, Public O
Nicole Sheree Webster
- Associate Professor of Youth and International Development
- Director of the 2iE-Penn State Centre for Collaborative Engagement in Burkina Faso, West Africa
Email: nsw10@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
Youth development, civic enhancement and international community development
Michael West
- Professor of African American Studies, History, and African Studies
Phone: (814) 865-6873
Email: mow5397@psu.edu
Area(s) of Specialization:
African American and African Diaspora History and Culture
Graduate Students
Tembi Charles
- Dual PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and African Studies
Email: txc372@psu.edu
Michael Derek Gideon
- Dual PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and African Studies
Email: mdg28@psu.edu
Vieux Toure
- Dual PhD candidate in French and Francophone Studies and African Studies
Email: vzt5067@psu.edu
Recent Graduates
Alexander Fyfe
- Dual PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and African Studies
Email: acf198@psu.edu
Staff
Jamie Whitehead
- Undergraduate and Graduate Staff Assistant
Phone: (814) 865-5406
Email: jle1@psu.edu