Program of African Studies
‘
Part of the Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of PAS
Panelists Biographies
9:00 – 10:30 am
African Studies: the Diaspora and Brain Drain
D. Soyini Madison
Interim Director,
Program of African Studies and Professor, Department of Performance Studies
Northwestern
University
Professor Madison obtained her PhD from Northwestern in the Department of Performance Studies and went
on to teach in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill for 19 years. In 1998 she was awarded a Fulbright
Fellowship to teach and conduct research for a year in Ghana.
Professor Madison lived in Ghana
two more years beyond the Fulbright year to continue her research
with Ghanaian human rights activists and to present a performance, based on her
fieldwork data, at the University of Ghana at Legon and the W.E.B. Dubois Outdoor Theatre
in Accra
entitled, Is It a Human Being or A Girl?
Other publications by Professor Madison include Critical
Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (2005), The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, co-edited with
Judith Hamera (2006), and The Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of
Contemporary Women of Color (1997). Professor Madison’s
current research project focuses on local Ghanaian
activists and their performance tactics in the defense of human rights and
social justice as these performances are influenced by political economy,
cultural tradition, and modernism. Her forthcoming book is entitled, Acts of
Activism: An Ethnography of Human Rights as Radical Performance under contract with Cambridge University
Press.
Lisa Aubrey
Associate Professor in African and African
American Studies and Political Science
Arizona State
University
Dr. Aubrey is Associate Professor in African and African American Studies and Political Science at Arizona State University. From 1995-2002, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and African Studies at Ohio University. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana from 1998-2000. Dr. Aubrey is also the author of The Politics of Development Cooperation: NGOs, Gender and Partnership in Kenya.
Simon Akindes
Professor
Department of Teacher
Education
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
He has published three educational books in Côte d’Ivoire and Benin, as well as numerous journal and encyclopedia articles, book chapters and review essays on computers in education and society, politics, music and culture. He was the guest editor of “West Africa Review” an online journal, issue 10 (2007), which focused on arts, culture, politics and society in Côte d’Ivoire and Benin available at http://www.westafricareview.com/issue10/toc10.htm.
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Professor and Chair,
Department of African American Studies and History
University
of Illinois, Chicago
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is Head of the Department of African American Studies, Professor of African American Studies and History and the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and formerly Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for eight years. He is also currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and an Adjunct Professor of History and African and African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He was elected Vice-President of the (U.S.) African Studies Association for 2007-2008 and will serve as President in 2008-2009. He specializes in African economic, social and intellectual history, as well as development studies, gender studies, and diaspora studies. He has published more than a hundred essays and articles and authored or edited more than two dozen books including most recently The Roots of African Conflicts (2007); The Resolution of African Conflicts (2007); The Study of Africa (2 volumes, 2007). Currently, he is working on a global project on African diasporas in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, funded by a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.
10:45 – 12:15 pm
Human Rights and Violence
Thomas Geraghty
Associate Dean for Clinical Education
Professor of Law
Director, Bluhm Legal Clinic
Northwestern
University, Law School
In addition to teaching, fund-raising, and administrative responsibilities, Tom Geraghty maintains an active caseload at the Bluhm Legal Clinic, concentrating primarily in criminal and juvenile defense, death penalty appeals, child-centered projects dealing with the representation of children and juvenile court reform. During the last 5 years, Professor Geraghty has worked in Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi on research projects with law students involving juvenile justice, the legal problems of street children, the status of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, women in the legal profession, and freedom of the press. In 1996, He helped to design a clinical curriculum for the Addis Ababa University School of Law. In 2000, he assisted in the drafting of a proposal for a child law curriculum for the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana in Legon. Professor Geraghty has also been involved in training African lawyers in trial advocacy skills in cooperation with the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Most recently, he designed a trial training program for children's advocates that was held in Malawi in March of 2003. A similar program is planned for Uganda in March of 2003.
Bernice Sam
National Programme Coordinator
Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), Ghana
Ms. Bernice Sam is a lawyer who has been a human rights activist for 15 years working at the community, national and international levels advocating for gender equality. She is the national programme co-coordinator for Women in Law and Development in Africa, a pan-African women’s rights network that empowers women to influence decisions at community, national and regional levels. She researched and led the struggle for protection of the rights of persons in non-formalized relationships in a property rights law. She spearheads the campaign to hear women’s voices in the democratic processes of Ghana including organizing the premiere women’s dialogue with 5 political party presidential aspirants. Ms. Sam established the Right to Information Coalition in Ghana that advocates for more access to information through law to enhance democracy in Ghana. She has written and co-authored books on HIV/AIDS, violence against women, property rights of women and human rights. She has several articles on democracy in the Daily Graphic, a daily newspaper in Ghana. Ms. Sam is an Advisor to the Commonwealth Foundation’s Civil Society Advisory Committee; and a board member on the Women in Local Government Fund
1:20 – 2:50
International Relations/ Sino-Africa Relations
Chikwendu
Christian Ukaegbu,
Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Department
of Sociology
Northwestern University
Clement Adibe
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
DePaul University
Clement E. Adibe is an Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University, Chicago. He obtained his Ph.D. in Political Studies from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in 1995 and was the Killam Post-doctoral fellow at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, between 1995-96. He served as a researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, Switzerland in 1995. He was a recipient of the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation fellowship in International Peace and Security (1992-94), and was an International Institutions Fellow at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (1992-93); doctoral fellow at the Thomas Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University (1993-94); and Visiting Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo, Norway, in 2001/2002. Dr. Adibe served as member of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) between 1997-2000, and was on the Executive Board of ACUNS in 1999. He serves on the Editorial Board of Global Governance. Among his scholarly publications are: “Africa in the United Nations” (2008); “The State-Business Nexus in Nigeria” (2005); “Do Regional Organizations Matter? Comparing the Conflict Management Mechanisms in West Africa and the Great Lakes Region” (2003); “Foreign Policy Decision-Making in Anglophone West Africa,” (2001); “Strategic Coercion in Post-Cold War Africa,” (1998); “The Liberian Conflict and the ECOWAS-UN Partnership”, (1997); Managing Arms in Peace Processes: Somalia (Geneva and New York: United Nations, 1995). Dr. Adibe’s current research projects include The Globalization Effects of the Niger Delta Conflicts in Nigeria and International Responses to the Crises in Darfur.
Ogenga Otunnu
Professor, Department
of History
DePaul University
Dr. Otunnu teaches African history, immigration and refugee studies; comparative slavery, Africa and the African Diaspora, and contemporary global issues. Dr. Otunnu has also taught the international summer program on human rights and refugee studies at York University for 10 years. Before coming to Depaul, Dr. Otunnu taught African history and refugee studies at York University in Toronto for three years. Dr. Otunnu has published 18 articles in refereed journals and three book chapters on nationalism, refugee crises, genocide, and human rights; and has trained UNHCR officials and international and local NGOs (in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas) on human rights, rights of displaced population, demobilization and integration of ex-combatants, and peace building.
3:15 – 4:45 pm
Entrepreneurship in Africa/African Capital Markets
Paul Christensen
Professor, Kellogg School of Business
Northwestern
University
Paul Christensen manages ShoreCap International Ltd., a $28 million international private equity company which invests in financial institutions in developing countries throughout Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Having established the company initially in London, Paul is now based in Chicago with responsibility for the company’s overall business development efforts, investment structuring, shareholder relations, board reporting, and development impact measurement. He is the former President and CEO of ShoreBank Enterprise Group, a $12 million-asset small business support organization in Cleveland, Ohio. At ShoreBank Enterprise, Paul managed a $3 million seed capital fund form small firms, a for-profit $5 million small business mezzanine finance company, and over 150,000 square feet of small business incubator space. Paul previously was Vice President of Neighborhood Progress, Inc., a leading civic organization investing in low income, minority neighborhoods in Cleveland. From 1992-1996, he was an Engagement Manager for the consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, where he focused on operations performance, organizational effectiveness and strategic planning for clients in the financial services, manufacturing, consumer goods, petroleum, and electric utility industries. Paul is a former director of ShoreBank Cleveland and now sits on the boards of BRAC Bank Ltd. in Bangladesh and Afghanistan, two of ShoreCap’s portfolio companies. Paul received an MBA with distinction from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Arts, economics, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Dartmouth College.
Robert Fogler
Founder
Thousand Hills
Ventures
Robert Fogler is the principal founder of Thousand Hills Venture Fund. He is a Managing Director of each of the THVF funds. Mr. Fogler is also an Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Denver University, where he teaches a course on Capital Markets in Africa that covers mortgage finance, microfinance, and private and public securities markets in Africa. Mr. Fogler is also a frequent speaker at international conferences and events on investment in Africa. Mr. Fogler holds degrees in Philosophy, Engineering and Law, all from the University of Michigan.
Kolawole Oyefeso
Managing Director
KOTCO Energy Limited
Dr. Kolawole Oyefeso is the Managing Director, Kotco Energy Limited. He is a graduate of South Bank Polytechnic (1972) and Rosai Crusis University, U.S.A. (1979) where he studied philosophy. He has an Honorary Degree in Business Administration from Bradford University, USA (2000). Oyefeso has numerous business interests spanning Engineering Services, Food Processing, Petroleum Products Marketing, Estate Development/Management and Global Imports etc. He is the chairman of the following companies: Kolawole Oyefeso Technical Company Limited, Kotco Power Industries Limited, Matna Food Limited, Kotco Bottling Company Limited, Kotco Limited.
Carol Pineau
Journalist and Filmmaker
Africa Open for
Business
Carol Pineau is a journalist who has specialized in Africa for more than a decade. She has reported for CNN, BBC, NPR, VOA, RFI and other major worldwide broadcasters. Africa Open for Business, her first long-format documentary, screened at the Cannes Film Festival, where she was given the "African Vision Award" by Agoralumiere. She was a plenary speaker at the World Economics Forum and was honored at the US-Africa Business Summit. Ms. Pineau is currently working on other documentary projects. Throughout two postings in Africa, as well as several assignments worldwide, Ms. Pineau has interviewed both Heads of State and rebel leaders, covering many of the world’s major hot spots. From the battlefields of the Eritrean/Ethiopian war, she reported live for CNN on, what was at the time, the world’s biggest war. From Belgrade, she covered the NATO bombings, and from East Timor she reported on the newly independent country’s first elections. Ms. Pineau reported live on the first-ever genocide conviction at the UN Tribunal for Rwanda, did exclusive reports from a secret military base in rebel-held Eastern Sudan, and was one of the first journalists into Nigeria after the fall of the military dictator.
February 7th
9:00 – 10:30 amGlobal Health
Kearsley Stewart
Department of Anthropology
Northwestern University
Kearsley A. Stewart (Ph.D. 2000, University of Florida) is Senior Lecturer in Medical Anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Adjunct Lecturer in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program in the Feinberg School of Medicine. She teaches courses on HIV/AIDS, Global Health Theory, Global Bioethics, Gender and Global Health, Medical Anthropology, Visual Anthropology and Africa. She is Senior-Key-Personnel on two recently funded Fogarty NIH grants, one with Feinberg and one with Weinberg. She is a research specialist in the theory and practice of Global Health and recently co-sponsored a workshop on “Moral Experience in Global Health” with colleagues at Harvard and Boston Universities. She helped to create a new Global Health minor at Northwestern University, which is now the largest minor in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Stewart was a David Bell Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies at the Harvard School of Public Health (2005-2007). She was a member of the 2002 inaugural group of the Fulbright New Century scholars. From 1999-2002, Stewart was a consulting medical anthropologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on a project to study adherence of newly-diagnosed HIV patients to anti-retroviral treatment. She is also working on a full-length documentary of the revival of glass bead production in Ghana, which recently won three awards at independent film festivals in the U.S.
David Kelso
Director Global
Health Initiative and Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University
David Kelso is Director of Northwestern University’s Center for Innovation in Global Healthcare Technologies (CIGHT) and Clinical Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. CIGHT has been awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop diagnostic devices for resource-poor settings. Prof. Kelso has been a leader in the expansion of the school’s engineering design curriculum which has resulted in the Engineering Design and Communications (EDC) courses for freshmen, the Institute of Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA), and the Masters in Product Development (MPD) program. Prof. Kelso has also introduced medical device design projects for the developing world into the senior biomedical engineering design course, and started an engineering design study abroad program in South Africa.
Kara Palamountain
Research Associate
Professor, Kellogg
School of Management
Executive Director ,
Global Health Initiative
Northwestern
University
Kara Palamountain is a Research Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management where she serves as the Executive Director of the Global Health Initiative. Kara's research focus is centered on medical diagnostics for infectious diseases in the developing world. In 2003, she began working with Dave Kelso on an initiative to develop and produce affordable HIV diagnostics for the developing world which later obtained funding in 2006 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to her work at Kellogg, Kara worked as a management consultant in Deloitte's Healthcare practice for over six years where she specialized in Medicare Part D strategy and implementation, pharmacy benefit management, and medical injectable strategy. Kara was awarded "2003 Ford Center Honorable Mention" for a white paper on "Sustainable Foundations for HIV/AIDS Care in South Africa" which was later published in the "Kellogg Anthology on Corporate Social Responsibility."
Matthew Gluckman
Professor and Chair, Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University
Matthew Glucksberg is Professor and the Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department of Northwestern University. He earned his BS and PhD in Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pulmonary physiology at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City. His technical expertise and research interests include tissue mechanics, microcirculation, and optical instrumentation. His laboratory has developed image-based methods to measure pressure and flow in the circulation of the eye, instruments to measure the response of pulmonary alveolar epithelial cells to their immediate mechanical environment, and is currently involved in developing minimally invasive optical biosensors for monitoring glucose, lactate and other measures of metabolic function. His teaching interests include biomedical engineering design for resource-poor environments with an emphasis in the problems of southern Africa. Dr. Glucksberg is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Board Chair of World Health Imaging Alliance, and a member of the Governing Board of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
10:45 – 12:15 pm
Public Policy
William Reno
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Political
Science
Northwestern University
Professor Reno is a specialist in African politics and the politics of "collapsing states." His current work examines violent commercial organizations in Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans and their relationships to state power and global economic actors. Reno's research takes him to places such as Sierra Leone, Congo, and Central Asia where he talk to insurgents (including so-called "warlords"), government officials, and foreigners involved in these conflicts. His books include Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge, 1995) and Warlord Politics and African States (Lynne Rienner, 1998). He is completing the forthcoming volume, The Evolution of Warfare in Independent Africa.
George Kieh
Professor, Department of Political Science
Grand Valley State University
George Klay Kieh, Jr. is Professor of Political Science and African Studies at Grand Valley State University, Michigan. He has served as Dean of International Affairs at Grand Valley State University, and as Chair and Professor of Political Science at Morehouse College. He has written extensively on civil conflicts in Africa, the military and politics in Africa, democratization in Africa, African political economy, and American foreign policy. His most recent publication is a co-edited volume with Pita Ogaba Agbese, The Military and Politics in Africa: From Engagement to Democratic and Constitutional Control (2004).
Elwood Dunn
Professor and Departmental Chair, Department of Political Science
University of the South
Dr. Dunn has taught at Seton Hall and Fordham Universities, Cuttington College, and the University of Liberia. He served in the government of his native Liberia (1974-1980), becoming a member of the cabinet. Dunn was editor of the Liberian Studies Journal, 1985-1995.
1:20 – 2:50 pm
Student Involvement in Africa
Jeff Rice
Lecturer, Department of History
Weinburg College of Arts and Sciences Adviser
As an undergraduate, Jeff Rice received the first Certificate in African Studies given at Northwestern University (1972). Subsequently he earned an M.Sc. at the University of Edinburgh writing a dissertation on wealth and corruption in 19th c. Ashanti. Upon the completion of this project Rice returned to Northwestern where he was a graduate student in African History working with Ivor Wilks. By the late 70s he became a full time bookseller ending up owning the scholarly bookstore, Great Expectations. In 2001 he returned to Northwestern as a Lecturer in History and Political Science and in 2002 joined the ranks of Weinberg College Academic Advisers and is now a Senior Lecturer in History. He has recently researched in Tanzania where he observed the Rwandan Genocide Trials and Uganda. Rice has taught courses on Nationalism and Genocide, African Civil Wars, Afro Pessimism and will be offering a course in the Spring entitled, "Africa in Fact, Fiction and Film".
Alyssa Eisenstein
Undergraduate Student, Journalism and International Studies
Northwestern University
Alyssa Eisenstein is a junior at Northwestern University with a double-major in Journalism and International Studies. After studying at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda on Northwestern's public health spring study abroad program, she spent this past summer working for the United Nations World Food Programme in the Uganda County Office. She has also interned for U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin. This upcoming spring she will work in Johannesburg, South Africa for a television station through Medill's journalism residency program. On campus she is involved with the Global Engagement Summit, Schmooze magazine, Dance Marathon and Delta Gamma sorority. Alyssa is passionate about Africa, global health, human rights, foreign aid and politics. After college she hopes to join the Peace Corps and work either in international reporting or for an international organization.
Alyssa Huff
Undergraduate
Student, Philosophy and Political Science
Northwestern
University
Coordinator, NU Darfur Action Coalition
Alyssa Huff is a senior at Northwestern University. She is double majoring in philosophy and political science and recently studied abroad in Durban South Africa, conducting research on Joe Slovo informal settlement. This summer she was awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant to conduct research on internally displaced refugees in Sierra Leone, which is providing the content for her senior thesis. Alyssa has been one of the coordinators of Northwester University Darfur Action Coalition, a chapter of STAND, for three years. Her interests include restorative justice, genocide, and resettlement as a means of reconciliation.
Jonathan Shaffer
Undergraduate
Student, Northwestern University
Coordinator, NU
Chapter of GlobeMed
Jon Shaffer a senior in the McCormick School of Engineering majoring in biomedical engineering and minoring in global health. He has been the President of GlobeMed at Northwestern for the past two years during which time the chapter grew from 15 student volunteers to over 45 engaged members. The chapter raised over $12,000 to support innovative projects at their health partner, the HOPE Center in Ho, Ghana.
Nathaniel Whittemore
Director, Center for
Global Engagement
Northwestern
University
Nathaniel Whittemore is the Director of the Northwestern Center for Global Engagement, where he designs programs to help students learn about global problem solving. Additionally, he is the Social Entrepreneurship editor on Change.org and founder of Assetmap.org, an online platform to accelerate collaboration and social capital sharing. He graduated from Northwestern in History in 2006.
3:15 - 4:45 pm
Keynote Speech: “Obama, AFRICOM, and U.S. Military Policy Toward Africa”
Dan Volman
Director
African Security Research Project
Daniel Volman is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars. He received his B.A. degree in History from UC Berkeley in 1975 and received his Ph.D. degree in African History from UC Los Angeles in 1991. He was on the staff of the Militarism and Disarmament Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, from 1977 to 1980, where he was trained in research on U.S. military policy by the project director, Michael Klare. While working at the Institute for Policy Studies, he became a specialist on U.S. military activities in Africa and he has been doing research and writing on this subject for the past thirty years. He has written extensively for both academic and popular journals, appeared on several radio programs, given presentations at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association and other academic conferences, and lectured at a number of universities and other institutions, including the National Defense Intelligence College, the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, Women in International Security, and the Association of African Studies Programs. In addition to his research and writing on U.S. military involvement in Africa, he is also now engaged in research and writing on the military involvement of China, India, and Russia in Africa.
