Dear ASC community,

Welcome to a new academic year!

We at the African Studies Center (ASC) are looking forward to seeing you at many of the exciting events we have lined up for this academic year. I hope the new academic year will bring renewed and reinvigorated commitment to the study of Africa. We welcome your participation in many of the programs we will be organizing, sponsoring, or co-sponsoring this year. As we begin the new academic year, I wanted to highlight the following:

  • The UMAPS Program: We are happy to, once again, welcome our UMAPS scholars to campus! Look out for their introduction in the coming week. The ten fellows will present their work and research at the colloquium series events in the coming weeks. 

  • The 2024  MIRS cohort: Welcome to our seventh cohort of the Masters in International and Regional Studies (MIRS) African Studies specialization students! This is our largest cohort in the history of the program, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to welcome these amazing students to our campus. Visit our students’ page to know more about our MIRS students.

  • We will begin this academic year with a Photo Exhibition and Poetry night in honor of this year’s Raoul Wallenberg Medal recipient. Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, an architect, poet, and Africa’s leading environmentalist will become the fifth African to receive the medal. Learn more about the exhibition here.

  • We plan to have a symposium on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. The crisis in Sudan breaks our hearts, and we hope there will be a resolution to the issue soon. Please join us on Monday, November 18th, 2024, for the symposium as we highlight the human cost of the crisis. Please register here.

  • This academic year, we will be strengthening our collaboration with U-M, Flint, Wayne State University, Eastern Michigan University, and K-14 schools in Southeast Michigan, thanks to our NRC grant.  

I am excited about the new academic year and the good tidings I hope it will bring us all. I look forward to seeing everyone on campus and at the many events we plan to organize this year.

Omolade Adunbi
ASC Director and Professor, Afroamerican and African Studies