Martha Saavedra, PhD, Associate Director

Martha Saavedra has been with the Center for African Studies since 1993. Trained as a Political Scientist, she has taught at St. Mary’s College of California, UC Berkeley and Ohio University. Her research has ranged from agrarian politics, development and ethnic conflict in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to gender and sport in Africa to a new collaborative project on representations of Africa in Chinese popular culture. At the Center, she co-coordinates the UnderstandingSudan.org curriculum project, oversees public programs and fellowships, and works closely with the African languages program among other things.

She is on the editorial boards of Soccer and Society; Sport in Society; and Impumelelo: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Sports in Africa. A veteran of Title IX battles, she has played soccer for over 30 years and is now coaching her youngest son.

Selected Research and Publications:

"Dilemmas and Opportunities in Gender and Sport-in-development." Chapter 6 in Sport and International Development, ed. Roger Levermore and Aaron Beacom, Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

“Women, Islam, Gender, Sports and the Female Body: Sub-Saharan Africa” (long version) A Mulher em África: Vozes de uma Margem sempre Presente, Editors: Inocência Mata & Laura Padilha, Lisboa: Edições Colibri / CEA-FLUL (Centro de Estudos Africanos da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.), 2007.

“Excavating the Field” on The Global Game: Making space on a ‘crooked field’ by John Turnbull. Included in blog entry September 20, 2007.

“Women, Gender, Sports and the Female Body: Sub-Saharan Africa,” in The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Volume 3: Family, Body, Sexuality and Health. Editor: Suad Joseph. Brill Academic Publishers, 2006.

“Women, Sport, and Development,” on Learn More pages, Sport and Development International Platform, Swiss Academy for Development, May 2005.

“Gender and Sports,” in A Companion to Gender Studies, eds. Philomena Essed, Audrey Kobayashi, and David Theo Goldberg. Blackwell Press, 2005.

“Football Feminine: The Development of the African Game,” in Soccer, Women, Sexual Liberation: Kicking off a New Era, Editors: F. Hong and J.A Mangan, Frank Cass: London/Portland OR, 2004. First published as a special edition of Soccer and Society, Vol. 4, Nos 2/3. Autumn/Fall 2003.

“Ethnicity, Resources and the Central State: Politics in the Nuba Mountains, 1950 to the1990s,” in, Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Sectoral Transformation in Islamic Africa, 1785-1995, edited by Michael Kevane and Endre Stiansen; E.J.Brill: Leiden, 1998.

Sudan: Confluence of Arab and African Worlds, Center for African Studies and Office of Media Services, University of California, Berkeley, 1995, 23 minute videotape and resource guide produced for use in K-12 Classrooms.

Doctoral Dissertation, Political Science, UC Berkeley,: Tractors and Transformation: Agricultural Mechanization, Farmers' Unions and the Decentralized State in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan, 1991. Committee: David Leonard (chair), Carl Rosberg, Michael Watts.

Masters Thesis, Political Science, UC Berkeley, Local Organizations and African Women, 1984.

Senior Honors Thesis, International Studies, Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), Theories, Women and the Modernization of Africa, 1983.

Select Courses:

• Sports, Politics and Development
• Women's Lives Worldwide: African Women
• Political and Economic Development of the Third World A & B

Center for African Studies
Stephens Hall, Room 356
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720-2314 USA

Tel: 510.642.8338
Fax: 510.642.0721
Email: martha AT berkeley.edu