Keynote Speakers and Panelists

(In alphabetical oder)

Omolade Adunbi (University of Michigan) is a political and environmental anthropologist, professor of anthropology and Afroamerican and African studies, professor of law (courtesy), and the director of the African Studies Center. He is a faculty associate and is affiliated with the Program in the Environment (PitE), the Donia Human Rights Center (DHRC), and the Institute for Energy Solutions at the University of Michigan. His areas of research explore issues related to governance, infrastructures of extraction, environmental politics and rights, power, violence, culture, transnational institutions, multinational corporations and the postcolonial state. In 2016, he received The Class of 1923 Teaching Award at the University of Michigan. He is also the recipient of the 2022 John Dewey Award for Excellence in Research and Teaching at the University of Michigan. His book, Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2015) won the 2017 The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland’s Amaury Talbot Book Award for the best book in Anthropology of Africa. His latest book, Enclaves of Exception: Special Economic Zones and Extractive Practices in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2022), interrogates the idea of free trade zones and their interrelatedness to oil refining practices, infrastructure, and China's engagement with Africa. His new project is at the intersection of social media, climate change, and the politics of the environment.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell represents Michigan’s 6th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. She is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Committee on Natural Resources, where she leads on critical issues, including affordable and accessible health care, clean energy and water, domestic manufacturing and supply chain resilience, and protecting our wildlife and natural resources. In 2021, she worked together with the White House, the auto industry, the auto workers, and environmentalists to announce the Biden Administration’s goal of having 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 be zero-emissions vehicles. Dingell also plays a major role in leading the fight against PFAS contamination, spearheading the PFAS Action Act with Republican colleague Rep. Fred Upton. Her collaborative work style also lends itself to bicameral work, most importantly on long-term care, as she authored the Better Care Better Jobs Act with Senator Bob Casey to strengthen and expand access to the long-term care system while also supporting the direct care workforce. As a fierce advocate for reform to our nation’s broken healthcare system, she is also the co-author of “Medicare For All” to finally guarantee care for all Americans.

Judd Devermont is the former special assistant to US President Joe Biden on African affairs. He was the author of the influential “US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa” white paper for the Biden administration, which was announced in August 2022. The strategy was followed by the US-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022, in which Biden pledged $55 billion towards supporting a revamped vision for the US on the continent. After stepping down from his position as senior director for African Affairs of the National Security Council, Devermont joined Washington DC-based Kupanda Capital as an operating partner, focused on innovation. Kupanda Capital is a private equity investor whose Africa-focused portfolio includes Fraym, a geospatial data company, climate fintech platform Nithio, and Lagos-based music label Mavin Records.

Adedolapo Fasawe has served as the Mandate Secretary (Commissioner) of Health Services & Environment in the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), Abuja, since September 2023. She is implementing a novel mandate to improve health with a green and clean environment. Dr. Fasawe’s training as a medical doctor and experience with public health education in her former capacity as general manager of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency has set her up well for her new role to improve the health and well-being of the residents of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Fasawe has focused on achieving a significant reduction in maternal and infant mortality in the FCT through measurable, multifaceted approaches such as community engagement, transparency, efficient service delivery, an optimal health workers' working environment, increased health insurance enrollment, and a sustainable environment. Her confident approach, open-door administration, communication skills, innovative leadership, and mentoring have greatly improved health service delivery across a variety of programs, from the provision of free birthing kits to pregnant women to the expansion of electronic hospital information systems. While working as the coordinator of the Lagos State Special Projects Unit and later director of Special Projects, Fasawe accomplished numerous public health goals, including drafting the mental health policy, which later became the Lagos State Mental Health Law of 2018. During her stint as the general manager of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, Fasawe spearheaded several environmental and sustainability projects, including the “Noiseless Lagos Campaign and Ban of Single-Use Plastic Bags” campaign, and left behind a one-of-its-kind laboratory in Nigeria for testing hazardous waste. She is a member of several local and national committees, including a UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) national committee on the study of available sustainable alternative materials to plastics and innovative packaging and recycling technologies. Based on the improvements in health and the environment achieved in Fasawe’s four-month short-term plan, residents of the FCT are assured of seeing even better health and environment outcomes as she moves into implementing her 2024–2027 medium-term plan.

Sarah Mosoetsa, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa, holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand. Mosoetsa was instrumental in establishing and setting up the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) in 2013 and held the position of CEO at the Institute from 2014. She is the author of several publications, including, amongst others, Eating from One Pot: Dynamics of Survival in Poor South African Households (Wits Press) and co-editor of Labour in the Global South: Challenges and Alternatives for Workers (ILO) and co-editor of Precarious Labor in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press). She has worked for various organizations, including the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). Mosoetsa sits on various boards and committees, inter alia, the National Minimum Wage Commission, the University of Venda Council, and the advisory board for the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. Mosoetsa is passionate about the humanities and social sciences in South Africa, the continent, and the globe and their contribution to societies grappling with challenges of poverty and inequalities, economic transformation, and redress.

Santa J. Ono (Unviersity of Michigan) is the 15th president of the University of Michigan. He began a five-year term in October 2022. A recognized leader in higher education in the United States and Canada, Ono is an experienced vision researcher whose work in experimental medicine focuses on the immune system and eye disease. At U-M, he is a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, microbiology and immunology in the Medical School, and molecular, cellular and developmental biology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Ono also serves as the chair of the U-M Health Board, the chair of Fulbright Canada, the chair of the University Climate Change Coalition, and is an honorary chairperson of the Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario. He also serves on a range of other boards, including the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, the U7+ Alliance, the Council on Competitiveness, the University Musical Society, Terramera, the Detroit Economic Club, Business Leaders of Michigan, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Board of Trustees.

Mary Catherine (Molly) Phee was sworn in as US ambassador to South Sudan on July 15, 2015. Phee is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of minister-counselor. She most recently served as chief of staff to the US special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan. Phee completed a three-year assignment as deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2014. She was director for Iraq at the National Security Council from 2009 to 2011, where she was responsible for coordinating the US transition from military to civilian operations, culminating in the withdrawal of US combat troops in December 2011. From 2005 to 2008, she served as counselor for political affairs and deputy Security Council coordinator at the US Mission to the United Nations, where she advanced US policies on issues such as Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli peace process, Burma, Iraq, Lebanon, and sanctions. Ambassadors Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus invited her to join the Joint Strategic Assessment Team established in 2007 to revise the US campaign plan in Iraq, and she was the senior civilian representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority to Maysan Province, Iraq, from 2003 to 2004. Phee has also served at US embassies in Rome, Kuwait City, Cairo, and Jordan. Assignments in Washington include special assistant to the undersecretary for public diplomacy, desk officer for UN Security Council affairs, and desk officer for Iran. During her career, Phee has received the following awards: the Baker-Wilkins Award for Outstanding Deputy Chief of Mission, 2014; the Order of the British Empire, 2006; the Secretary of Defense’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award, 2004; and numerous State Department Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. Before joining the Foreign Service, she was a deputy press secretary to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. An Indiana University graduate, Phee earned a BA and an MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Kelly Askew (University of Michigan) serves as the chair of the Department of Anthropology and holds the Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professorship for Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies. She earned a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in music and anthropology from Yale University. Askew has spent over thirty years working in Tanzania and Kenya. Her scholarly work and documentary film projects span three areas: the interplay of arts, aesthetics, and politics; critical development studies, with a focus on rural energy access and property rights formalization; and indigenous political movements, especially those of the Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Askew’s publications include Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (University of Chicago Press, 2002), which was a finalist for the African Studies Association Herskovits Award; The Anthropology of Media, co-edited with Richard Wilk (Blackwell, 2002); and African Postsocialisms, co-edited with Anne Pitcher (Edinburgh University Press, 2006). Her film work includes Poetry in Motion: 100 Years of Zanzibar’s Nadi Ikhwan Safaa (Buda Musique, 2016); The Chairman and the Lions (Documentary Educational Resources, 2013), which won the top prize at the ETNOFilm Festival in Croatia in 2013 and a Special Jury Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival the same year; and Maasai Remix (2019), a film that examines indigenous solutions to challenges facing Maasai communities. This film has been an official selection at several international festivals, including the International Festival of Ethnological Film in Belgrade, Serbia; the Festival du Film Pastoralismes et Grands Espaces in Grenoble, France; the Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival in Atlanta; and The Hague Global Cinema Festival in the Netherlands.

Marissa Balmith Pahaladh (University of Pretoria) a lecturer in the pharmacology department at the University of Pretoria, holds a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she focused on in silico molecular modeling and drug design targeting the Ebola virus. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in the chemistry department at the University of Cape Town, specializing in cancer biology. Balmith Pahaladh is actively engaged in research addressing health issues related to cancer metastasis and chronic septic wounds in low- and middle-income countries.

Bart M. Bartlett (University of Michigan), a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, focuses on the chemistry of inorganic materials. His research explores the relationship between atomic and molecular structures and electronic structures with applications in solar water splitting, biomass conversion, and nanomaterials for energy storage. His diverse group of trainees works to harness inorganic synthesis to control the composition and morphology of complex materials. Bartlett has been honored with several awards, including the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award in 2014, the LSA Excellence in Education Award and the Seyhan N. Eğe Faculty Development Award both in 2013, and the NSF CAREER Award, also in 2013. He was an ACS Scholar and John B. Ervin Scholar, graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000, where he conducted undergraduate research with Professor Bill Buhro. Bartlett was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and a NOBCChE E. I. DuPont Graduate Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his PhD in inorganic chemistry in 2005 under Professor Dan Nocera. Following this, he was a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at Berkeley from 2005 to 2007 with Professor Jeff Long. Bartlett began his independent career at the University of Michigan in July 2008.

Jennifer Bisgard co-founded Khulisa Management Services in 1993 and is now a freelance senior monitoring, evaluation, and learning advisor working on various projects across Africa. She graduated magna cum laude with a BA in political science and economics from the University of Michigan in 1985 and earned a master’s degree in social change and development from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. After a yearlong internship in Liberia with USAID/Monrovia in 1987, she moved to Pretoria, South Africa, in 1988. Until 1993, she was the senior education specialist at USAID/Pretoria, established under the US Congress’ Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986.

Bilal Butt (University of Michigan), an associate professor at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, focuses his research on the drivers and effects of violent conflicts over natural resources. He emphasizes empirical fieldwork to understand the interactions between people and their environment in ecologically diverse dryland regions, combining geospatial technologies with historical and ecological insights. He interrogates how differential power relations affect the etiology of resource conflicts and critiques orientalist approaches to development programs that emerge from misinterpretations of indigenous peoples and environments. With a longstanding engagement in environmental conflicts, Butt's work spans wildlife poaching, land acquisitions and green energy. He has received the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award and the University of Michigan's Superior Teaching Award. His scholarly contributions appear in journals like the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Applied Ecology, and Humanity. Butt teaches courses on conservation and development, political ecology, environmental security and conflict, environmental governance, and preparing for international fieldwork.

Kamissa Camara (University of Michigan) serves as a professor of practice in international diplomacy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. In her role, she brings real-world experience to the theoretical underpinnings of international diplomacy studies. At the same time, she contributes her expertise as a senior Africa adviser at the US Institute of Peace and as a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute. Camara has held strategic roles within the Malian government, notably serving as the foreign minister and chief of staff to Mali's president. These high-profile positions cemented her status as a leading authority on African politics and international relations. Beyond academia and public service, Camara is an influential voice in global media circles, contributing to CNN, Al Jazeera, and BBC, among others, on African and global politics. She is finalizing her doctoral studies in political science at the University of Oxford, underscoring her commitment to blending academic rigor with practical diplomacy.

Mariana P. Candido (Emory University)  is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor of History, the Nina Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in fall 2023, and the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in the spring of 2014. Candido is a specialist in West Central African history during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. Her most recent book, Wealth, Land and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery and Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2022), received the 2023 African Studies Association Best Book Award in African Studies. Her previous book, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013), received an honorable mention in the competition for the Herskovits Prize/African Studies Association. In 2022, Candido was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK; the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, the American Academy in Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the Luso-American Foundation. Since 2016, Candido has been one of the editors of the African Economic History, and since 2018, she has served as one of the five associate editors of the Oxford Encyclopedia Research of Slavery, Slave Trade and Diaspora.

Lisa R. Carter (University of Michigan) is the dean of libraries and university librarian at the University of Michigan. She directs the vision and strategy for a top-tier library system in line with the university's strategy and vision. Carter's current priorities include refreshing library facilities, bolstering the library's organizational culture with antiracism and social justice practices, spearheading planning, fundraising, and campus collaborations, improving access to relevant and compelling content and collections, and fostering regional, national, and international partnerships that advance scholarship and support the university and library's mission. From 2018 to 2023, Carter served as vice provost for libraries and university librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also has been an associate director of Special Collections and Area Studies at The Ohio State University Libraries, head of the Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University Libraries, director of archives and audio-visual archivist at the University of Kentucky Libraries, and a film cataloger at Iowa State University in her first library position. Carter holds a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary humanities from Michigan State University.

Andries Coetzee (University of Michigan), professor of linguistics and senior advisor for African engagement at the University of Michigan, also directs international partnerships for the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. His tenure as director of the African Studies Center spanned 2018 to 2022. Coetzee also served as editor of “Language”—the flagship journal of the Linguistic Society of America—from 2017 to 2022. He holds an honorary professorship at North-West University, his alma mater in South Africa. Coetzee's research focuses on documenting phonetic and phonological patterns of Southern African languages, particularly Afrikaans, his mother tongue, and Setswana. He collaborates with colleagues from both North-West University (Daan Wissing, Ian Bekker, and Rigardt Pretorius) and the University of Michigan (Pam Beddor, Nicholas Henriksen, and Lorenzo García-Amaya).

Rachel Deblinger (University of California, Los Angeles) is the director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) at the UCLA Library, a grant program that supports the digitization and preservation of cultural heritage materials at risk around the world. MEAP grants aid in archival documentation and ensures open access to perspectives that contest established historical narratives. Deblinger is also the author of the forthcoming work “Saving Our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust” (Indiana University Press, 2025). Her research focuses on Holocaust memory in America, media technology, and the intersection of philanthropy and representation.

Adrian M. Deese (University of Michigan), assistant professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the history of religion, education, and literature in sub-Saharan Africa. He was a US Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria in 2015–16. His writings have appeared in “Africa: Journal of the International African Institute,” “The Journal of Church and State,” “Studies in World Christianity,” “Africa Today,” and “The Journal of West African History.”

Robert Ddamulira (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation) helps manage the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s clean energy access grantmaking in the Advancing Climate Change Solutions program area, which includes all energy access projects the foundation supports in Tanzania. He also oversees grants that support global institutions working on energy access issues. Ddamulira has been a practicing environmental professional since 2004 and has worked on energy and climate change issues in Africa for regional and global organizations, including the World Wide Fund for Nature. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental and natural resources management from Makerere University in Uganda and earned his PhD in energy and environmental policy at the University of Delaware. He later launched GreenPesa, an environmental sustainability company with a focus on energy efficiency and sustainable forestry investments in the US and Africa.

Christina De Simone currently leads the financial planning and analysis team at an oncology biotechnology company based in the Bay Area. Her career has been dedicated to the finance organizations of large and startup biotech companies. While with Roche Pharmaceuticals and Genentech, she worked in Milan, Italy, in 2016 and in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 2017 to 2018. At Roche South Africa, she was involved in the Techno Girls mentorship program with UNICEF, where she was paired with an enthusiastic young woman from Tembisa. The mentorship relationship continues beyond the program's official conclusion. Since 2019, De Simone has served as treasurer and board member of the African Library Project, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing literacy by creating libraries across Africa. She recently completed the Impact Investing in Africa Executive Education program at the University of Cape Town, motivated by her interest in impact and angel investing in African companies through a gender lens, with a focus on education. De Simone earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business with minors in Spanish language, literature, and cultures and Asian languages and cultures from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) in 2009.

Angela D. Dillard (University of Michigan), the inaugural vice provost for Undergraduate Education at the University of Michigan, previously chaired the Department of History in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA). She holds the Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professorship in Afroamerican and African Studies, and in History. Additionally, Dillard has an affiliated faculty status in the Residential College and is a member of its Social Theory and Practice program. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she focuses on American and African American intellectual history, with particular attention to intersections of race, religion, and politics across the political spectrum. Dillard is working on her third book, "A Different Shades of Freedom," which explores the unexpected alliances and intersections between the post-World War II civil rights movement and the emergence of the New Right.

Melissa Elafros (University of Michigan), a graduate of the University of Michigan, earned her bachelor’s degree with honors in Human Biology and Spanish from Michigan State University, where she was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She completed her Master of Arts in Bioethics before obtaining her MD and PhD in Epidemiology at the same institution. During her doctoral studies, Elafros lived in Zambia for two years to research the medical and psychosocial impacts of HIV and epilepsy among adults in Lusaka for her dissertation. Subsequently, she completed her neurology residency at Johns Hopkins Hospitals, where she received an R25 grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate barriers to meningitis care in Zambia. In 2020, Elafros joined the University of Michigan for a neuromuscular fellowship and currently provides patient care in the university's outpatient neuromuscular clinic.

Geoff Emberling (University of Michigan) is an archaeologist and museum curator with a specialization in the ancient civilizations of Northeast Africa and the Middle East at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. He has led archaeological projects in Sudan for over fifteen years. Emberling has been part of the African Heritage and Humanities Initiative since 2013, an involvement that has profoundly reshaped his approach to both archaeological fieldwork and heritage practice.

Brandon Marc Finn (University of Michigan), an assistant research scientist at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, engages in interdisciplinary research that encompasses urbanization, informality, and mining. His current projects critically examine the unintended consequences of decarbonization efforts. Finn has recently returned from his second fieldwork excursion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he investigated the initial stage of the global cobalt supply chain. Additionally, he is involved in ongoing research in Ghana, assessing how informality shapes the end stage of global electronic waste supply chains. Moreover, Finn explores the implications of urban informality for climate change mitigation and the pursuit of equitable transitions

William Gblerkpor (Western Illinois University) holds the position of Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian Scholar of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is an archaeological anthropologist, cultural heritage specialist, and museum studies expert. His research and writing explore the dynamic role of material culture, landscapes, and heritage in the construction and maintenance of social identities and livelihoods in West Africa. He is interested in the archaeology of identities, applied anthropology, cultural resource management, digital archaeology, environmental archaeology, climate change, biocultural and biodiversity heritage conservation, landscape archaeology, and conservation photography. Gblerkpor is the principal investigator of the West Africa Biocultural Heritage Conservation Project and the founding director and curator of The Museum of Natural and Cultural Heritage at Shai Hills. He is coordinating the establishment of an “Integrated Digital Social Lab for Applied Research (IDSLAR)” to mobilize African and Africanist scholars to explore opportunities and challenges in the continent’s heritage sector for accelerated development.

Yousif Hassan (University of Michigan) is an assistant professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. His work examines the social, economic, and political implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data focusing on the relationship between race, digital technology, and technoscientific capitalism. Hassan’s research is at the intersection of social and racial justice, and technology policy. His most recent project investigates the development of AI and its innovation ecosystem across multiple African countries focusing on data governance and the sociotechnical knowledge production practices of the state, scientists, and the tech industry. Hassan is a former Illinois distinguished fellow at the School of Information Sciences and a faculty affiliate with the Center for African Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Edward Hightower is an EV OEM CEO, global automotive OEM executive, entrepreneur, board director, and published author. He is the managing director of Motoring Ventures LLC. Hightower served as chief executive officer and president of Lordstown Motors Corp., an original equipment manufacturer of electric vehicles for the commercial fleet market. In 2022, he led the operational turnaround of the company, implementation of a new asset-light business strategy, and launch of its first vehicle – the Endurance battery electric full-size pickup truck. In doing so, over 700 jobs were saved, and Endurance was selected as a finalist for 2023 North American Truck of the Year. Of all the new electric car manufacturers, Lordstown is one of the very few to have successfully developed, certified, launched, and delivered its vehicles to customers. Crain’s Automotive News magazine recognized Hightower as the first African American CEO of a publicly traded automaker. Originally from Chicago, Hightower earned a BS in general engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He and his family live in metro Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Brian Ikaika Klein (University of Michigan) is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the Program in the Environment. He is a political ecologist and critical human geographer interested in environmental governance, resource politics, and rural development with a particular focus on Madagascar and the artisanal and small-scale mining sector. Brian is currently working on a book manuscript investigating “everyday exploitation” in Madagascar’s goldfields. His research has been published in scholarly outlets, including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Political Geography, and Geoforum. Brian holds a PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to entering academia, he worked in environmental policy and development practice in Washington, DC, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar. Brian was born and raised in Hawai‘i and tries to get back as frequently as possible.

Joseph C. Kolars (University of Michigan) is the Josiah Macy Jr. Professor of Health Sciences Education and senior associate dean for education and global initiatives at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Kolars oversees medical student, graduate, resident/fellow, and post-doctoral education as well as continuing professional development/CME. He has served as program director of the internal medicine residency and fellowship programs at UMHS and at Mayo Clinic. A major focus of his career is global health and strengthening education systems in low-resource settings. In addition to serving on the Fogarty International Center Advisory Council, he is co-principal investigator on one of five NIH Fogarty Center-funded Global Health Fellows Program: the Northern Pacific Global Health Research Fellows Training Consortium. Since 2010, he has been the co-director for the Joint Institute for Translational and Clinical Research with Peking University of Health Sciences. Kolars has been extensively involved with the NIH Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI). He lived with his family in Shanghai from 1996-1999 to help establish one of China’s first western-based healthcare systems. From 2007-11 he served as a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A practicing gastroenterologist, he obtained his MD in 1982 from the University of Minnesota Medical School and completed his post-graduate training at the University of Michigan.

Valerie Labi is the co-founder and CEO of Wahu, an electric bike startup designing and manufacturing e-bikes and offering a connected ecosystem of services that is growing economic opportunities for youth in Ghana. Labi is a serial entrepreneur and a 2014 Mandela Washington Fellow, a distinction awarded to the most promising Young African Leaders by President Obama. Labi’s experience includes serving as Ghana's country director for nonprofit iDE and developing market-based solutions in sectors such as agriculture and water & sanitation. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the University of Southampton and her Master of Studies from the University of Cambridge in sustainability leadership.

Laston Manja (University of Michigan) is currently a PhD student in economics and holds a position of lecturer in economics at the University of Malawi. He is a U-M African Presidential Scholars (UMAPS) alum (winter 2022). During his UMAPS fellowship, Laston worked on a research project seeking to understand the dynamics for which cash transfers help spur saving in a developing country context, using experimental data. His current primary fields of interest within economics are development and labor.

Aaron McCloud is the CEO at Intervene K-12, a comprehensive data-driven intervention program with high-dosage online tutoring. McCloud grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He struggled academically throughout middle and high school in LAUSD. He enlisted in the US Navy and discovered a passion and aptitude for engineering when he was recruited into the Navy Nuclear Power Program. After the Navy, McCloud pursued his passion by receiving support from tutors to help close his academic gaps. He started in community college, then completed a BS in mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California, then a MS engineering and MBA at the University of Michigan. After years of working in maritime, defense and energy sectors, he learned of the deficits in the skilled workforce pool due to so many students like himself struggling in K-12, thus not qualified for high demand jobs. In 2015, McCloud decided to build a high-impact tutoring program, Intervene K-12, using data-driven live online small-group tutoring to help struggling students become high performers ready for the workforce.

Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan) is the Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities and Professor of French, Women's and Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on medieval France and is situated at the intersection of literature, history, and theory. Her most recent book, In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France, explores relations of dominion and mastery as represented through human-animal interactions. Earlier books study medieval theories and practices of queenship in relation to romances about adulterous queens (The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Medieval France) and the gendered cultural values of blood as represented medieval literary texts (The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature). She has collaborated with colleagues to write books on a twelfth-century author of romances (Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes); on one of the earliest known women authors in France (A Critical Companion to Marie de France); and on a widely circulating medieval saint's life based on the life of the Buddha (In Search of the Christian Buddha). Her current research investigates ways in which medieval thinkers imagined the persistence and precarity of human beings in adaptations and rewritings of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Mike McGovern (University of Michigan) is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work focuses on politics. Themes he has explored include the frictions between Pan-Africanism and Socialism, aspirational facets of kinship talk, the interplay between popular music and violent street protests, and the afterlives of revolutionary speech and practices.  He has published three books: Making War in Côte d'Ivoire, Unmasking the State, and A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country. He is currently working on a comparative book on resentment as a structure of feeling and a total social fact. He has lived and worked in francophone West Africa on-and-off since 1989, and started research in Myanmar in 2016. He supervises students working in West and East Africa and Southeast Asia on a wide variety of topics ranging from the micropolitics and aesthetics of dance troupes in a postsocialist setting to quotidian interreligious relations in Myanmar and Thailand. His own work incorporates close attention to language, to historical materials, and to political economy alongside the interests of social and cultural anthropology. In addition to his academic work, he was the West Africa director of a research-based conflict mitigation organization (International Crisis Group) and is committed to conversations about how to do things with anthropology in addition to training more anthropology professors.

Tiffany McGriff is a career Foreign Service Officer in the Public Diplomacy career track with the US Department of State. In the summer of 2022, she joined the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations as the Office of African Affairs deputy director. Her previous postings include acting division chief in the eDiplomacy's Diplomatic Innovation Division and director of the IRM Human-Centered Design Lab; Diplomat-in-Residence for the New York Metro Region; deputy director for strategic communication and outreach in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (DC); spokesperson and acting public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya; special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Juba, South Sudan; Country Desk Officer for Guinea-Conakry, Ghana, and Niger in the Bureau of African Affairs; Duty Officer in the White House Situation Room; watch officer in the State Department's Operations Center; political-economic affairs officer at the US Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal; and consular and public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Luanda, Angola. McGriff has an MA in international and intercultural communication from the University of Denver and a BA in political science with a minor in art history from Howard University. She is a 1999 recipient of the Thomas Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship and interned as the special assistant to the US Ambassador in Pretoria, South Africa (during graduate school) and as the assistant to the senior curator in the art in the Art in Embassies program (Undergrad). She also interned in the Washington, DC, congressional office of late Representative Donald Payne, Sr. of New Jersey (as an undergraduate).

Ato Micah is an accomplished global business leader with over two decades of experience in Insights and Strategy, Brand Management, and General Management. Currently, he serves as the managing principal of Maverick Research. During his tenure at Nielsen, Ato held various leadership roles, including leading the Retail Measurement Practice in Ghana and Nigeria, where he oversaw the measurement of over 100 FMCG categories across these markets. He was also the country director for Ghana and a client business partner for Unilever, where he demonstrated his leadership abilities and spearheaded business growth on a global scale. Additionally, Ato has served on several boards, contributing his expertise to further business growth and development. He currently sits on the Boards of Credit Mall (part of the $1.5 Billion Teachers Fund) and Norwalk Soap LLC. Prior to joining Nielsen in 2012, Ato spent 12 years in brand management roles at Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Sun Products in Wilton, Connecticut. At Millward Brown in Fairfield, Connecticut, he played a pivotal role in driving growth and expanding the company's global reach. Ato's global business acumen, leadership skills, and strategic thinking have been honed through his extensive international experience and MBA studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in economics from Oberlin College in Oberlin, where he developed a strong foundation in business principles that has served him well throughout his career.

Massy Mutumba (University of Michigan) is the associate director of the African Studies Center and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Biological Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Her work on HIV focuses primarily on adolescents, with the goal of improving self-management of HIV and measuring and promoting mental health and well-being, including the integration of mental health and HIV. Her research on sexual reproductive health focuses on understanding the individual, community, and institutional barriers to the uptake of modern contraceptive methods in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sauda Nabukenya (University of Michigan) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History, where she is currently completing her dissertation as a Mellon/ACLS Fellow. She holds a master’s in history from Makerere University in Uganda, where she wrote a thesis on the politics of the Constitution-making process in Uganda from 1959-1995. Her research particularly focuses on histories of law, women, gender, and class in colonial and Post-colonial Uganda. Her PhD dissertation “In Pursuit of Right, Justice, and Peace: Ordinary Litigants and the Making of Uganda’s Legal Culture, ca. 1900-1970,” examines the historical trajectories of marginalized people’s experiences with the law and the ways in which they contributed to the development of their legal culture. By investigating the history of African-run local courts and their localized legal practice, her research reveals how ordinary people shaped the content of law and its application by bringing their ideas, attitudes, everyday life experiences, and local evidentiary practices into formalized practice of law. Her findings are based on an extensive archive of 150,000 local court records that she personally discovered, organized, and cataloged in 2018 and 2019 in Uganda.

Micheal Nayebare (University of Michigan) is a PhD student at the School of Information, specializing in AI/ML intelligent computation supports for generative justice. He is supervised by Professor Ron Eglash. Previously, Nayebare served as a volunteer writer with the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET), focusing on IoT & 5G Infrastructure. He holds an MSc in information technology from Carnegie Mellon University and a BSc in computing.

Joan Nwatu (University of Michigan) is a Nigerian second-year PhD student in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) program, and a member of the Language and Information Technologies Lab, where Professor Rada Mihalcea advises her. Her research interests include improving representation in AI, specifically in computer vision, language, and multimodal applications.

Chiamaka Okafor is a Nigerian journalist with over five years of experience in the journalism, communication, advocacy, and accountability space. Chiamaka is currently a freelance journalist who is building a foundation focused on media and information literacy and its intersection with different sectors, including climate change, politics, finance, health, gender, sexual and reproductive rights, environment as well as interreligious and intercultural dialogue. She worked as a senior international correspondent for Nigeria’s leading online investigative news platform, Premium Times, where she covered the last UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), the Paris Summit on new financing pact, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Sudan crisis, the Libya situation, and elections in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Chiamaka curated Diplomatic Corner, the first interview series in Nigeria that spotlights senior foreign government representatives and diplomats and the role they play in maintaining relations between their countries and Nigeria. Chiamaka is a graduate of mass communication of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Anambra State, Nigeria, and worked with distinction on Premium Times’ award-winning health desk, even as she participated as a steering team member on the social accountability and impact program of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID). She is currently a post-graduate diploma student in International Relations and Diplomacy at Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria. Chiamaka is a recipient of the Thomson Reuters Foundation Report Malaria Fellowship and the Maternal Figures Fellowship supported by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation of Columbia University in New York, USA.

Babajide Ololajulo (University of Ibadan) is an associate professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology. His research interests cover the political economy of oil exploitation in Nigeria, heritage, memory, and multiple modes of being and belonging. He has published widely on these themes. Currently, he is conducting an ethnography of memorial arcades in Nigeria, exploring the significance of arcades in terms of their capacities to stimulate consciousness about the past. Ololajulo is a member of the 2016 cohort of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholar (UMAPS) Program.

Jacki O’Neill is the founding director of Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI). She is passionate about designing technologies that enhance, rather than remove, agency and create sustainable futures. She brings this passion to the MARI, where she is building a multi-disciplinary team, combining research, engineering and design to solve local problems globally. An ethnographer by trade, her research aims to drive innovation in order to make the best possible technologies for work, health, and society. Before leading the MARI, she was a principal researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) area at Microsoft Research India. She has led major research projects in the future of work, from new labor platforms to workplace AI and chat; digital currencies and financial inclusion, and global healthcare. She has more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, two innovation awards, and 16 patents (from new interaction mechanisms to crowdsourcing). She has served on the program and organizing committees of major conferences such as CHI, CSCW, ICTD and ECSCW for many years. She holds a PhD from the University of Salford.

Chido Onumah is a Nigerian-Canadian journalist, archivist, author, and rights activist. Onumah holds a PhD in communication and journalism from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in  Spain. He is the coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), a pan-African center that focuses on media, information, research, advocacy, and training. Onumah is currently coordinating a project “Protecting Political Activists” archives, to write another history of Nigeria with the objective of preserving Nigerian cultural heritage. It seeks to engage a wider audience by using digital tools to promote and disseminate Nigerian heritage. It aims at digitizing important and imperiled archival holdings of Nigeria’s radical and pro-democracy activists to increase accessibility to these materials as well as to preserve them for posterity.

Isaac ‘Asume’ Osuoka, coordinates Social Action International, an organization promoting resource democracy and the human rights and livelihoods of marginalized communities in West and Central Africa. He previously served as coordinator of Oilwatch Africa. His role involved building local capacity to respond to industry challenges, advocating for policy change, and working with others to highlight the link between natural resource exploitation, environmental degradation, and social inequalities. He coordinated Africa’s civil society participation in the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review (EIR). Osuoka has participated in several international conferences and has been a panelist at the United Nations expert group meeting on the use of non-renewable resource revenues for sustainable local development. Osuoka holds a doctorate in environmental studies and has been a faculty member at York University and Carleton University in Canada. His teaching and interdisciplinary research intersect the state, civil society and social movements, labor, environment, and climate change, focusing on Africa’s Gulf of Guinea and the Sahel region.

Susan D. Page (University of Michigan) is a professor of practice in international diplomacy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy's Weiser Diplomacy Center, and a professor of practice at the University of Michigan Law School. She has deep expertise in international relations, particularly in Africa. Her senior-level roles have included Assistant Secretary-General/Special Adviser on Rule of Law, Global Focal Point Review Implementation, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) to the United Nations Mission for Justice Support to Haiti (MINUJUSTH), first US Ambassador to newly independent South Sudan, US Chargé d’Affaires to the African Union, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, key adviser to the peace process that resolved Africa’s longest-running civil war through international mediation, head of rule of law programs for the UN, and a foreign service regional legal advisor and political officer in East, Central, and Southern Africa. Page earned a JD from Harvard Law School and an AB in English with high distinction from the University of Michigan. She was awarded a Rotary International Postgraduate Fellowship to Nepal where she conducted research on women’s and children’s rights. In addition, she received certificates of merit and distinction from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland before attending law school. Ambassador Page is an elected member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a board member of Road Scholar, and a member of the Association of Black American Ambassadors. 

Joyojeet Pal (University of Michigan) is an associate professor at the School of Information. His research is on politicians' use of social media and on misinformation networks online. In the past, he was a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research.

Panos Y. Papalambros (University of Michigan) is a professor emeritus appointed in mechanical engineering, integrative systems and design, art and design, and architecture, and recognized as the James B. Angell Distinguished University Professor and the Donald C. Graham Professor of Engineering. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. His primary interests are in mathematical design optimization for product development and complex multidisciplinary systems design with an emphasis on sustainability, particularly advanced automotive systems, including electric and hybrid powertrains, structural design, modularity, and product platforms, and multi-vehicle systems – linking design decisions with commercial and regulatory decisions to derive business strategies and government policies. His research in design preference elicitation, including aesthetics, machine learning, and crowdsourcing, has linked engineering design with computer science, marketing, and the behavioral and social sciences. He is a co-author of the textbook Principles of Optimal Design: Modeling and Computation and holds degrees from the National Technical University of Athens and Stanford University.

Derek R. Peterson (University of Michigan) is Ali Mazrui Professor of History and African Studies. He’s the author of “A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda,” which will be published early in 2025. Peterson was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, largely in recognition of his work in salvaging endangered archives in Eastern Africa.

Anne Pitcher (University of Michigan) received a BA (Magna Cum Laude) in political science and history from Duke University and an MPhil and DPhil in politics from the University of Oxford. Currently, she is the Joel Samoff Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies. She is also a research professor in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Her published work relies on survey research and fieldwork to examine electoral and party politics, political economy, the distribution of public goods, and the preferences of urban voters in Africa. She has conducted both cross-national, comparative studies, and sub-national research in selected countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, and South Africa.

Kwame Robinson (University of Michigan) is a socio-technical action researcher and a current PhD student in the School of Information. Community participatory design coupled with applied Artificial Intelligence is how he often takes action with others. Sustainable social, economic, and environmental relationships with human-AI interaction are his areas of inquiry. His two current interrelated research projects are Computing for Community-based Economies and Decolonialized Sustainability.

Rina Shah is a voice for a new generation of political leaders. As a geopolitical expert who is the daughter of African and Indian immigrants, she has earned high acclaim for her sharp analysis and ability to carve a refreshing path between partisan extremes. A principled defender of democratic values and fierce advocate for systems reform, Rina has published opinion editorials on a wide range of issues and appears multiple times each week on the world’s top media networks, including CNN, BBC World News, Al Jazeera Media Network, The Economist, and The Washington Post. Rina has been a spokeswoman and top advisor for two US presidential campaigns, a senior aide to two members of Congress, a sought-after political strategist, an accomplished businesswoman, and, most importantly, a mother of three young children. Rina believes that preserving the values that made America the most prosperous and powerful democracy in history does not mean running away from progress; she embraces a better future for all. She is a proud alumna of West Virginia University, where she focused on engineering, political science, and women's studies during her undergraduate career; she also completed graduate studies in global public health at George Washington University. She is a founding adviser and proud member of the American Conservation Coalition and is a senior fellow for Inclusive Governance at The Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy. One of her favorite ways to unwind includes choreographing and dancing to AfroDesi beats.

Anya Sirota (University of Michigan) is a Ukrainian-born architectural designer and educator. She is the founding principal of “Akoaki,” an award-winning practice of architects and urban design specializing in public spaces and experimental cultural infrastructure. She teaches architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she also serves as associate dean for academic initiatives.

Geoffrey Siwo (University of Michigan) is currently a research assistant professor in the Department of Learning Health Sciences at Michigan Medicine, and a research associate at the Michigan Center for Global Health Equity. His research focuses on accelerated and equitable innovation using emerging computational technologies such as artificial intelligence, programmable biotechnologies and frameworks for scientific discovery at a global scale such as open innovation challenges. He has been a co-founder of several technology startups, including Anza Biotechnologies and Helix Nanotechnologies. Previously, he was a research assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame and lead researcher at IBM Research Africa. He has been recognized as a TED Fellow, a Next Einstein Forum (NEF) Fellow, a Quartz Africa Innovator and a Young African Committed to Excellence. His work has been featured in several media including CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, and Ozy, among other media.

António Tomás (University of California, Irvine) earned his PhD from Columbia University in New York City. He worked as a journalist in Angola and Portugal and is the author of a biography on the African nationalist Amílcar Cabral (Amilcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist, Hurst, 2021) and a study on the process of urbanization of Luanda, the capital city of Angola (In the Skin of the City: Urban Transformation of Luanda, Duke University Press, 2022). He taught in Uganda and South Africa and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology.

Łukasz Stanek (University of Michigan) is professor of architectural history at A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Stanek authored Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (Minnesota, 2011) and Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War (Princeton, 2020), which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, among others. Stanek taught at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland), the University of Manchester (UK), and held guest professorships at Harvard University (USA) and the University of Ghana (Ghana).

Howard Stein (University of Michigan) is a professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and the Department of Epidemiology. He is a development economist educated in Canada, the US and the UK who has taught in both Asia and Africa. He is the editor or author of more than a dozen books and edited collections and more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and reviews. His research on Africa has focused on foreign aid, finance, structural adjustment and neoliberalism, RCTs, health, gender and development, health and the environment, institutional transformation, industrial policy, export processing zones and other industrial parks, agricultural policy, poverty and rural property right transformation, income inequality and Chinese investment in manufacturing. He teaches a variety of courses in DAAS and Epidemiology including the history of African economic development, Africa and post-war development theory and policy, globalization and African health, the political economy of African development and health and socio-economic development.

Michael Sudarkasa is the CEO of the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) and the founder and chairman of Africa Business Group (ABG). A US commercial attorney by training, Sudarkasa has lived, traveled, and worked in 50 countries around the world (including 35 in Africa) and is the author of several publications, including The African Union Commission’s Africa Business Directory: Toward the Facilitation of Growth, Partnership and Global Inclusion (African Union, 2014), A Field Guide to Inclusive Business Finance (UNDP 2012) and Investing in Africa: An Insider’s Guide to the Ultimate Emerging Market (John Wiley & Sons, August 2000). Sudarkasa currently serves on the UNDRR’s Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE), is a member of the University of Michigan Provost’s Advisory Committee, sits on the Advisory Board of the African Center for the Study of the United States of the University of Witwatersrand, and as also chair of the Advisory Board of the African Studies Center of the University of Michigan. He holds a BA degree from the University of Michigan (High Honors in history) and a JD degree from Harvard Law School.

Matt Turner (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Geography. He has worked and lived in the West African Sahel for the past 35 years with his areas of specialization including food insecurity, environmental and land-use change, famer-herder conflict, and climate change vulnerability. His recent research projects include an analysis of political motivations and socioenvironmental impacts of the Great Green Wall in West Africa and other mass afforestation programs across the world’s drylands. He has also just completed a project that empirically investigated the effect on climate change on trans-Saharan migration from Senegal and Niger.  He currently is working on a multi-year study on climate change, governance, and conflict in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali.

Arthur Verhoogt (University of Michigan) is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor of papyrology and Greek in the Department of Classical Studies. His publications include editions of papyri and ostraca, and studies in the social, economic, and cultural history of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. He has a special interest in archaeologies of writing in ancient Egyptian villages through the study of legacy data from the University of Michigan excavations at ancient Karanis (1924-1935). His Discarded, Discovered, Collected: The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection (University of Michigan Press, 2017) received the 2018 U-M Press Book Award. He is co-editor, with W. Graham Claytor, of Papyri from Karanis: The Granary C123 (P. Mich. 21; University of Michigan Press, 2018), which combines a thorough archaeological overview of one structure from Karanis with the edition of a number of papyri found in that structure. Verhoogt received national research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2008-2009 and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in 2014-2015.

Michael Wahman (Michigan State University) is an associate professor of political science. He previously held teaching and research positions at the University of Missouri and the London School of Economics.  His research focuses on elections, democracy, and representation in Africa. He is the author of Controlling Territory, Controlling Voters: The Electoral Geography of African Campaign Violence (OUP 2023), and numerous journal articles published in journals such as American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Politics.

Akbar K. Waljee (University of Michigan) is an accomplished physician-scientist in healthcare policy and innovation, focusing on using machine learning and deep learning techniques to improve healthcare outcomes. He holds several key leadership positions at the University of Michigan, including serving as the faculty lead for the IHPI Data and Methods Hub and the co-director of the Michigan Integrated Center for Health Analytics and Medical Prediction (MiCHAMP), and a convener for the e-Health and Artificial Intelligence program (e-HAIL). Dr. Waljee's educational background includes undergraduate and medical degrees from Emory University and a master’s degree in health services research from the University of Michigan. He also completed a healthcare policy fellowship at the Center for Health and Research Transformation. Waljee aims to improve healthcare access, quality, and efficiency, particularly in resource-constrained settings. He employs novel machine learning techniques to develop AI-enabled decision support systems and tools to facilitate more personalized care for disease management and healthcare utilization. He aims to deliver efficient, effective, and equitable care locally and globally.

Aisha Walcott-Bryant is a senior staff research scientist and head of Google Research - Kenya. She has over a decade of experience working in Africa and leading teams to develop innovative technologies that leverage AI and computing to address some of Africa’s most pressing challenges. Her current work focuses on the challenges of Africa's food systems. It explores ways in which advances in AI tools can make an impact on food security through building resilience in food systems. Aisha has also worked on a range of projects including in healthcare, transportation, and climate. Prior to her time at Google, she was a senior technical staff member at IBM Research Africa and led projects in developing AI tools for global health with a focus on malaria control, maternal newborn and child health, family planning, and COVID-19. Walcott is passionate about working with clients and collaborators to drive advancements in science and computing, which will ultimately transform the African continent. Aisha earned her PhD in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on robotics. Currently, she serves on the board for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) doctoral research program in data science, is a workshops co-chair for the International Conference on Learning and Representations 2023 (ICLR’23), and was a program co-chair for the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’22) in 2022. Her work has led to over 30 patents and over 30 publications.

David A. Wallace (University of Michigan) is a clinical associate professor at the School of Information. He has published and presented in a wide range of professional fora, examining recordkeeping and accountability; archiving and the shaping of the present and the past; archival social justice; freedom of information; government secrecy, and professional ethics. He is the lead editor and contributor to Archives, Recordkeeping & Social Justice (Routledge 2020); editor of a special issue of Archival Science on “Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction” (2011); co-editor of Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (2002), and the series technical editor for twelve volumes of the National Security Archive's The Making of US Policy series (1989-1992). He has consulted widely, including substantial associations with the South African History Archive’s Freedom of Information Programme, Stories For Hope, an intergenerational storytelling NGO in Rwanda, and the Ethiopian Archives and Library Service. Between 2015 and 2020 he was responsible faculty for UMSI's Global Information Engagement Program in Cape Town, South Africa.

Leo Zulu (Michigan State University) is an associate professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences and interim director for MSU's African Studies Center. He specializes in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, particularly in southern Africa. With over 30 years of international experience, he integrates interdisciplinary approaches to tackle environmental challenges. Zulu's research focuses on biodiversity conservation, community resource management, inclusive sustainable agriculture intensification, land use change, and sustainable livelihoods. He has served as a trainer, facilitator, and technical expert with the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Least Developed Countries Experts Group, and the UN Environmental Program in adaptation planning, including National Adaptation Plans of Action and National Adaptation Plans. His current research includes assessing and indicators for climate adaptation using earth observation data and testing them in Malawi.

Raquel Ramos Buckley is a communications editor at the International Institute, supporting five centers and programs—the African Studies Center, Center for Armenian Studies, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Global Islamic Studies Center. She works with centers' staff and directors in planning different communication strategies to support their activities and events by discussing publication content and distribution, advising on media creation, and assisting in implementing U-M's branding. Buckley received her MA in educational studies specializing in new media and new literacies (now design and technologies for learning across culture and contexts) from the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education.

Marwa Hassan is the academic program specialist for the African Studies Center. She recently received her bachelor's degree from the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) at the University of Michigan. She had the opportunity to present her published paper on James Baldwin at the DAAS Symposium: Preserving James Baldwin in the Digital Now. During her time in Michigan, she was the president of the only multicultural sorority on campus, Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority including the Beta Chapter.

Amanda Kaminsky is the ASC graduate intern and a current PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology. Her dissertation research examines how global narratives of China-Africa relations structure and are structured by the lived experiences of Chinese expatriates and Kenyan citizens working together in food industries. Building on over a year of fieldwork in Nairobi, her work explores the intersections of race, migration, and diasporic foodways.

Teyei Pam is the projects and events coordinator at the African Studies Center. A social impact enthusiast and entrepreneur with experience in human-centered design, Pam lived and worked extensively in Africa. He pioneered several local initiatives with an emphasis on the need for a contextual approach to sustainable development and contributed to numerous projects with various organizations, including Oxfam GB, the European Union, and several local groups and individuals across Africa. Pam graduated with a master’s degree from Brandeis University in sustainable international development and co-founded several civil society groups and social enterprise platforms that connect youth entrepreneurs in Africa with resources to thrive.