The African Studies Center (ASC) at the University of Michigan welcomes Carina Ray, associate professor of history, as ASC’s acting director, effective January 1, 2025.
Over the course of this semester, I look forward to working with our winter 2025 cohort of outstanding UMAP Scholars to advance their research agendas. I also welcome the opportunity to support the Center’s important Title VI work here at UM and in surrounding communities.
A historian of modern Africa, Carina’s research is primarily focused on Ghana and its diasporas. She is the author of Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana, winner of the 2016 American Historical Association's Wesley Logan Prize and the 2017 African Studies Association's Aidoo-Snyder Prize. Her writings have also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among others. She is a series co-editor of New African Histories (Ohio UP) and African Identities: Past and Present (Cambridge UP).
Ray joined the Department of History in 2022 as the H.P. Bentley Chair in African History. She is affiliated with several professional organizations, including the African Studies Association, where she served on the Task Force for the Protection of Academic Freedom and Program Co-Chair in 2020. She is also a member of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), American Historical Association, Ghana Studies Association, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, and the African American Intellectual History Society.
