ASSOCIATE FELLOWS
As of December 2010, the following, listed in alphabetical order, are Associate Fellows
of Thinking Africa:
ATO SEKYI-OUT is Professor Emeritus in the Division of Social Science and the Graduate
Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University, Toronto, Canada. He was born
and grew up in Ghana. He received an A.B in Government from Harvard in 1966 and a Ph.D.
in Political Theory from the University of Toronto in 1977. His publications include essays on
African literature and social thought, particularly on the Ghanaian writer and thinker Ayi
Kwei Armah and Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience. Among his notable public addresses and
lectures are “Towards a Post-Apartheid Political Morality” presented to the Einstein Forum
in Berlin in 2001 and “Deferring to Difference, Cultivating the Civil Commons, Honouring
Humanity: What’s the Left Universalist to Do?” given in Vancouver in 2006. He has taught a
number of courses which either revised from an existing syllabus (Critical Theory of Society)
or fashioned as wholly new offerings (Marxism and Political Discourse; Fanon and
Contemporary Social Thought). His book on Fanon has been widely mentioned and
discussed in commentaries from North America to South Africa, where some principal critics
of the “post-apartheid” dispensation in particular find the central argument of the book – to
say nothing of the fears and hopes it evokes – useful. He is currently at work on a book
provisionally entitled Essays in Left Universalism.
BRUCE BAKER is Professor of African Security and Director of the
African Studies Centre at Coventry University. His published articles and books cover
African democratisation, governance, policing, security sector reform, popular justice
and informal justice. His current research focus is informal and formal policing in postconflict African states and has led to the publication of Multi-choice Policing in Africa,
Security in Post-conflict Africa: The Role of Non-State Policing; and numerous articles. He
has conducted fieldwork in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, The
Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Seychelles, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Comoros.
Visit his webpage at http://www.coventry.ac.uk/cu/d/338/a/6166.
CHRISSIE BOUGHEY is Dean of Teaching and Learning at
Rhodes University. Chrissie came to South Africa in 1999 after spending many years
teaching English as a second/foreign language in places such as Spain, the Middle East
and the United Kingdom. She worked in Academic Development at the University of the
Western Cape and the University of Zululand before taking up the post of Director of the
CHERTL at Rhodes in 1999. Since then, she has been involved in a number of national
initiatives directed at the assurance of quality and the improvement of teaching and
learning in higher education. She supervises widely at doctoral level and, in 2005, was
awarded a fellowship by the South African Association for Research and Development in
Higher Education because of her work in Academic Development. Visit her web-page at
http://www.ru.ac.za/chertl/chertl/staff.
ROGER BROMLEY is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at
Nottingham University. He is the author of Lost Narratives: Popular Fictions, Politics and
Recent History, Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions, From Alice to
Buena Vista: the Films of Wim Wenders, and co-editor of A Cultural Studies Reader: History,
Theory, Practice and A Reader in Cultural Studies. He pioneered the academic study of
popular fiction in the 1970s and has also published a large number of scholarly articles and
book chapters (including work on Rwanda and South Africa), and spoken at conferences in
17 countries. As well as working on issues of migration, identity, and narrative, he has
written on film from a cultural studies perspective, and his work in progress, Narratives of
Hope? Conflict, Reconciliation and Cultural Fictions (on film, literature, performance and
commemoration in the context of Bosnia, Rwanda, and South Africa) combines these
different approaches. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of
Post-Conflict Cultures at the University of Nottingham, and for a number of years he was on
the executive of the Association for the Teaching of African, Caribbean, and Asian
Literatures (Vice-President), chaired the Raymond Williams Trust, sat on the Board of
Directors of the Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham, and chaired the governing body of
an
inner
city
school
in
Nottingham.
Visit
his
webpage
at
http://nottingham.academia.edu/RogerBromley.
PATRICK CHABAL is Chair in African History and Politics at
Kings College London. For the past four years, Patrick Chabal has been engaged in a
long-term project combining the study of culture in comparative politics and an enquiry
into the theory of the social sciences. The first stage of this work resulted in a book,
Culture Troubles: politics and the interpretation of meaning. The second was developed
at greater length during the course of his Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton in 2006-2007 and will also lead to a book publication. His previous research
concentrated on two main areas; firstly, the political analysis of contemporary Africa
within the framework of the comparative study of the developing world, which resulted
in, among others, the publication of Africa: the politics of suffering and smiling, Africa
Works: disorder as political instrument and Power in Africa; secondly, the postcolonial
history, politics and literature of Portuguese-speaking Africa on which he published
Angola: the weight of history, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa, The Postcolonial
Literature of Lusophone Africa, Vozes Moçambicanas: literatura e nacionalidade and
Amílcar Cabral. Patrick Chabal continues his research on the modern and contemporary
history of Africa, with a special interest in the comparative analysis of the continent
since
independence.
Visit
his
webpage
at
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/history/staff/academic/chabal.html.
JACQUES DEPELCHIN is a committed intellectual, academic, and
activist for peace, democracy, transparency and pro-people politics in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. He was born in the Congo and educated at Lovanium University
(Kinshasa) in the DRC, the University of London, Johns Hopkins University in Italy, and
Stanford. He has taught African History and related subjects at UC Berkeley, UC Santa
Cruz, San Francisco State, Stanford, Syracuse, and universities in DR Congo,
Mozambique, and Tanzania. He was present in the Eastern Congo during the most
recent war in 1996-2002, and was a member of the non-militarist RCD-Kisangani
movement led by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba which opposed continuation of the war. He
participated in the negotiations leading to the Lusaka Cease-fire, those leading to Sun
City-1 in 2002, and later, in portions of the negotiations leading to the Global and
Inclusive Accord in Pretoria, 2003. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the
Berkeley-based Ota Benga International Alliance for Peace in the DR Congo. Under its
umbrella, he is researching American and Congolese social healing and bringing
together the healers, as well as lecturing and writing on the DR Congo to improve
American understanding of its history and present realities. The Ota Benga Alliance is
linked with a sister organization in Kinshasa, The Ota Benga Center for Human Dignity.
You can read more about him on the website of the Ota Benga Alliance at
http://www.otabenga.org/node/4.
MICHAEL ONYEBUCHI EZE was a Stiftung Mercator
Foundation Research Fellow at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (Institute for
Advanced Study in Humanities) in Essen, Germany from 2006-2009. He received his
PhD in Intellectual History from Univesität Witten-Herdecke, Germany. He teaches
African studies at the University of Augsburg, Germany and until recently, Goethe
Universität Frankfurt. He is the author of two books, The Politics of History in
Contemporary Africa and Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa both from
Palgrave-Macmillan. He has also published in many academic journals and is currently
contracted for four new monographs (Palgrave Companion to African Intellectual
History; Nigeria – Historicizing a failed state; A theory of an African Humanism; A New
Introduction to African Philosophy – a Dialogue with Kwasi Wiredu). Visit his webpage at
http://www.Africancommunitarianism.com.
GRANT FARRED is Professor in the Africana Studies and
Research Centre at Cornell University. He previously taught literature and cultural
studies at Duke University. He also taught at Williams College and Michigan University.
Farred earned his PhD. from Princeton University in 1997, and an MA from Columbia
University in 1990 after a BA Honours from University of the Western Cape, in Cape
Town, South Africa in 1988. He has served as General Editor of the prestigious journal of
critical cultural studies, South Atlantic Quarterly (SAQ) since 2002. He has published in a
range of areas, including postcolonial theory, race, formation of intellectuals, sport's
theory, and cultural studies and literary studies. His books include Midfielder's Moment:
Coloured Literature and Culture in Contemporary South Africa, What's My Name? Black
Vernacular Intellectuals, Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA, and his
most recent Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football, He is completing a fourth book
manuscript entitled, Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest (forthcoming in from University of
Minnesota Press, dedicated to thinking of the philosophy of athletic movement.) Farred
also edited a volume entitled Rethinking CLR James, a collection of essays on the
Caribbean intellectual written by major scholars in the field of history, literary criticism
and cultural studies. He edited a special issue of SAQ (2004) entitled After the Thrill Is
Gone: A Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa, a serious appraisal of South African
democracy, its failure and its successes, in the post-apartheid era. Visit his webpage at
http://asrc.cornell.edu/grant.html.
NIGEL C. GIBSON directs the Honors program and teaches in
the Institute of Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College in Boston,
USA. He is author of Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali
baseMjondolo and Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (awarded the Caribbean
Philosophy Association’s “Frantz Fanon Prize” in 2009) and the editor of a number of
books, including Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Challenge; Adorno: A Critical Reader
(with Andrew Rubin) Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary
Africa in Focus (with George C. Bond); Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the
Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and Biko Lives: Contesting the
Legacies of Steve Biko (with Andile Mngxitama and Amanda Alexander). He is also the
editor of the Journal of Asian and African Studies and is currently completing a book,.
Visit his webpage at http://www.emerson.edu/academics/departments/liberal-artsinterdisciplinary-studies/faculty?facultyID=359&filter=P.
JANE GORDON is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Political Sciences at Temple University. She is author of Why They Couldn’t Wait: A
Critique of the Black-Jewish Conflict Over Community Control in Ocean-Hill Brownsville,
1967–1971 which was listed by The Gotham Gazette as one of the four best books
recently published on Civil Rights. She is also author of Not Only the Master’s Tools and
co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies which was chosen as the
NetLibrary eBook of the Month for February 2007. She also coauthored Of Divine
Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age (Paradigm Publishers, 2009) and is
completing her next book, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon.
Dr Gordon teaches modern and contemporary political thought, black political thought,
politics and theory of education, modern women political thinkers, political theory in
literature and film, and race and politics. Visit her webpage at
http://www.temple.edu/polsci/gordon/index.htm.
LEWIS GORDON is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of
Philosophy at Temple University, where he also is the founding director of the Institute
for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is
the author of seven books, co-author of one, editor of one, and co-editor of three: Bad
Faith and Antiblack Racism; Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on
Philosophy and the Human Sciences; Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism in a
Neocolonial Age, which won the Gustavus Myer Award for Outstanding Book on Human
Rights in the United States; Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential
Thought; Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times; An Introduction to
Africana Philosophy; and, with Jane Anna Gordon, Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in
the Modern Age; Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy; with TD Sharpley-Whiting and R. T. White, Fanon: A Critical Reader; with Jane Anna Gordon, A
Companion to African-American Studies and Not Only the Master’s Tools: AfricanAmerican Studies in Theory and Practice. His forthcoming books are No Longer Enslaved
Yet Not Quite Free: Essays on Freedom, Justice, and the Decolonization of Knowledge and
What Fanon Really Said. Before joining Temple, Professor Gordon taught at Brown
University, where he was the founding chairperson of the Department of Africana
Studies. Professor Gordon also teaches as a visiting professor at the University of the
West Indies at Mona, Jamaica and was the Jay Newman Visiting Professor of Philosophy
of Culture at Brooklyn College (spring 2010). Professor Gordon has lectured all over the
globe and has been the subject of academic studies and colloquia. He was President of
the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2003–2008).
SIBA GROVOGUI is Professor of International Relations and
Political Theory at John Hopkins University. He is author of Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns
and Africa; Race and Self-Determination in International Law and Beyond Eurocentrism
and Anarchy. He has published on regimes of sovereignty, race in international theory
and eurocentrism in international relations. One of his current book projects focuses on
rethinking the international in the discipline of international relations while another
explores the rule of law and global governance in Chad. Visit his website at
http://www.grovogui.com/ or http://politicalscience.jhu.edu/bios/siba-grovogui/.
GILLIAN HART is Chair of Development Studies at Berkeley
University as well as adjunct professor in the School of Development Studies at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research interests include political economy, social
theory, critical development studies, gender, agrarian and regional studies, labour,
Southern Africa, Southeast Asia. She is author of Disabling Globalization: Places of Power
in Post-Apartheid South Africa as well as numerous journal and popular articles on a
range of issues. As Adjunct Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, she
participates in a research cluster program with South African graduate students and is
also working collaboratively with a group of South African and Indonesian scholars and
activists to explore the rise of agrarian movements in post-apartheid South Africa and
post-Suharto Indonesia, and the connections they are forging with one another. Visit her
website
at
http://geogweb.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/G_Hart.html.
MABOGO MORE is a former Associate Professor of Philosophy at the former University
of the North and University of Durban-Westville. He is currently teaching political
philosophy in the School of Politics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has published
a number of articles on African philosophy, social philosophy and political philosophy
in journals such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Theoria, Alternation, Dialogue
and Universalism, African Journal of Political Science, Quest and Philosophia Africana. He
has also contributed a number of book chapters in edited books.
MICHAEL NEOCOSMOS is Senior Research Fellow at the
Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa and
Honorary Professor in Global Movements at Monash University, Australia. He has taught
at various universities in Britain and in Africa, such as the University of Dar-Es-Salaam,
Tanzania, the University of Swaziland, the National University of Lesotho, the University
of Botswana where and the University of Pretoria South Africa. His main fields of
research have included Rural Development, Migrant labour, Ethnicity, Citizenship, State
and Civil Society, Political Transition as well as issues of Social Theory concerning
Development, Democracy, Human Rights and Political Subjectivities. His main
publications include: Social Relations in Rural Swaziland (editor) (1987); The Agrarian
Question in Southern Africa (1993); From Foreign Natives to Native Foreigners:
Explaining Xenophobia in South Africa (2006 and 2010). He is currently finishing a book
on Rethinking Politics in Contemporary Africa. Visit his webpage at
http://humanities.uwc.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:prof
essor-michael-neocosmos&catid=44:visiting-research-professors&Itemid=57.
RAJ PATEL is an award winning writer, academic and
activist. He has degrees from Oxford University, the London School of Economics and
Cornell University, has been a visiting scholar at Yale, and is now a Visiting Scholar at UC
Berkeley's Center for African Studies, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is the author of the internationally
acclaimed Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, and the
New York Times and international bestseller, The Value of Nothing. He has also coauthored Food Rebellions with Eric Holt-Gimenez, and Promised Land, with Peter Rosset
and Michael Courville. He has also published widely in the academic press, with articles
in peer-reviewed philosophy, politics, sociology and economics journals. As a fellow at
the Institute for Food and Development Policy, he has testified in front of US Congress
on the origins of the 2008 food crisis, and continues to advise the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He has lectured on subjects ranging from agriculture,
climate change, and social movements to slums and fast food to governments,
universities, unions, progressive groups and the media in the US, Canada, the UK, Spain,
Italy, Australia, New Zealand, India, Thailand, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. He has
appeared on CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC, NPR, PBS, DemocracyNow!, and has written for the
Guardian, Mail on Sunday, Observer, The Nation, Atlantic Monthly Food Channel,
NYTimes.com, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, among others. Visit his
website at http://rajpatel.org/.