Samuel Fosso and African Postcolonial History

Afe Adogame

Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society

Afe Adogame, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society, is a leading scholar of the African diaspora. He earned a PhD in history of religions from the University of Bayreuth in Germany and has served as associate professor of World Christianity and religious studies, and director international at School of Divinity, New College, at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His teaching and research interests are broad, but tend to focus on interrogating new dynamics of religious experiences and expressions in Africa and the African diaspora, with a particular focus on African christianities and new indigenous religious movements; the interconnectedness between religion and migration, globalization, politics, economy, media and the civil society.

Lina Benabdallah

Professor

Wake Forest University

My book, Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations was published in 2020 by Michigan Press University. It develops a framework drawing on Qin Yaqing’s Relational Internatonal Relations theory in order to analyze China’s human capital investments and network-bulding motivations in Africa. I am now working on a new book which studies current Chinese government-issued discourses and narratives about the New Silk Road being a continuation of Sino-centric 15th Century Indian Ocean exchanges. The project investigates the degree to which Chinese foreign policy is successful (or not) in impacting local elites and citizens’ perceptions of China in countries with New Silk Road projects. 

Jacob Dlamini

Associate Professor of History

Princeton University

Jacob Dlamini is a historian of Africa, with an interest in precolonial, colonial and postcolonial African History. He obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2012 and is also a graduate of Wits University in South Africa and Sussex University in England. Jacob held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Barcelona, Spain, from November 2011 to April 2015, and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University from August 2014 to May 2015. A qualified field guide, Jacob is also interested in comparative and global histories of conservation and national parks.