#therodneys

Ambassador (ret.) William M. Bellamy holds the Joan M. and James P. Warburg Chair in International Relations at Simmons College, Boston, MA. He is also a Senior Adviser to the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He was previously Director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., and, before that, Senior Vice President of the National Defense University itself. He holds an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Ambassador Bellamy retired from the Foreign Service after a 30-year career in 2007. His last overseas posting was as U.S. Ambassador to Kenya (2003–2006), where he directed U.S. security programs in the Horn of Africa, supervised the U.S. government’s largest foreign HIV/AIDS program, and led multinational efforts to combat corruption and promote good governance.

Jeremy L. Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Departments at the College of the Holy Cross. Jones received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2012.  Prior to graduate school, he spent seven years working in the non-profit and non-governmental sector, both in the US and in Africa.  His academic research is broadly concerned with the interweaving of economic action and everyday life.  In his current project, Jones focuses on young, formally unemployed men living in an urban township near the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.  He pays special attention to these youths' experience of Zimbabwe's record-breaking bout of hyperinflation, and their strategies for making money in seemingly impossible circumstances. His recent publications include: "Freeze! Movement, Narrative and the Disciplining of Price in Hyperinflationary Zimbabwe." Social Dynamics Jones, J. L. (2010) and "'Nothing Is Straight in Zimbabwe': The Rise of the Kukiya-Kiya Economy 2000-2008." Journal of Southern African Studies Jones, J. L. (2010).

Dr. René Lemarchand is a retired professor of political science from the University of Florida with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles. Since retirement, he has worked for US AID (Agency for International Development, Dept. of State) out of Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire) as a Regional Consultant for West Africa in Governance and Democracy. He is currently the Democracy and Governance advisor to USAID / Ghana. Lemarchand is well known for academic contributions to the concept of clientelism, and for his work on the genocide in Burundi. A few books authored and/or edited by Lemarchand include African Kingships in Perspective (1977), African Policy in Southern Africa (1978), Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (1996), Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (1994), Green and the Black: Qadhifi's Policies in Africa (1964), Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (1963), Political Clientelism in Patronage and Development (1981), Rwanda and Burundi (1970), and Selective Genocide in Burundi (1974).

Lara Ayad (BU/Art History) Homegrown Heroes: Painting Peasant Masculinity at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo, 1937 Lara Ayad is a PhD candidate in African art at Boston University's Department of the History of Art and Architecture. Lara investigates the fine art collection of the Agricultural Museum in Cairo, which was created ca.1937. Her focus on modern Egyptian art analyzes artistic depictions of peasants created during the interwar period as catalysts of national subject formation under British occupation. Lara was a FLAS and research grant recipient through the African Studies Center between 2009 and 2015, and her research interests include racial identity, sexual representation, and artistic movements in 20th century Africa and the Middle East.

Philippe Beaujard is the Emeritus Research Director of CNRS and a member of the World History Association and of the team Institu des Mondes Africains (Imaf) at Paris 1.  His research since 1997 focuses on a history of the Indian Ocean before the 16th century, repositioned in the context of the Old World. He seeks to grasp the processes of old globalization, studying the history of plants cultivated in the Indian Ocean before the arrival of Europeans, linguistic research on the Malagasy language, and research on the Arabic-Malagasy manuscripts Southeast of Madagascar. This research led to the publication of a book in two volumes in 2012 The Indian Ocean worlds Flight. 1: From the formation of the state in the first Afro-Eurasian world system (4th millennium BC J.-C.-6th century AD..) and Flight. 2: The Indian Ocean of globs of the Old World.

Sarah Davis Westwood is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. Her dissertation project focuses on the wars between French colonial forces and the armies of pre-colonial Senegalese states. She is particularly interested in military culture and modes of warfare in West Africa and the Atlantic world. Presently, Sarah is a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University.

Danielle Sanchez is an Assistant Professor of African History at Muhlenberg College. As a cultural and urban historian of modern Africa she has specific interests in race, expressive culture, and resistance in francophone central Africa. Sanchez received her Ph.D. in History from The University of Texas at Austin. She is the co-editor of African Culture and Global Politics (Routledge, 2014) and Slavery, Migrations, and Transformations: Connecting Old and New Diasporas to the Homeland (Cambria, 2015). Sanchez’s teaching interests largely connect with her research, which includes a current research project that explores daily life, urban development, and race relations in colonial Brazzaville during the Second World War.

Jean Borgatti’s research explores cross-cultural concepts of art and aesthetics, Masquerades and Festivals, Portraiture, Black Atlantic World, Continuities and Discontinuities in Africa, African Diaspora, and Oceanic and Native American art over time. Borgatti currently serves as a Consultant in African and Oceanic Art at the Fitchburg Art Museum. With a Ph.D. in Art History from UCLA he has taught as a Professor in Art History both at the University of Benin, Nigeria and an Associate Professor at Clark University. She has been a lifetime member of the African Studies Association and the College Art Association. Borgatti is also a recipient of the 2014-15 Fulbright Teaching/Research Fellowship Nigeria and the 2014 Life Time Achievement Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA). She is currently teaching on contract in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.