News

Studying a language is an immediate way to immerse oneself in African knowledge systems.

• Why study language and culture
  
• Why study language and culture at Berkeley

Learn more: African languages at UC Berkeley

On December 3, 2024, students studying Swahili at the University of California, Berkeley, gathered at Swahili Spot Restaurant in Oakland for an immersive cultural and linguistic experience.

Gloria Kahamba was recently named among the Top 25 Women in Management Africa and was featured in 9to5Chick’s Top 100 Career Women in Africa, which testifies to the leader she has become on the African continent. She was a Mastercard Foundation Scholar at UC Berkeley, earning her master’s degree in Public Health.

The LL.M. Program shares profiles of the first three LL.M. Mastercard Foundation Scholars at UC Berkeley: Hudheifa Aden from Somalia, Agbor Tabe from Cameroon, and Getachew Gayzibayso from Ethiopia.

Undergraduate Fellowships

Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis in African Studies

• David Villani, History. Les Rouges et les Noirs: French Communism, African Nationalism, and the Creation of Post-War Anti-Colonialism.

Honorable Mentions

Muslim West Africa’s ‘Core Curriculum’ Explained, Explored and Redefined: A Conference in Honor of Charles C. Stewart was organized jointly by the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the Islamic Manuscript Association. It took place September 19-20, 2024 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dinah Lawan (UC Berkeley) and Mathew Ayodele (Stanford) win the top two paper prizes for the 2024 West Coast Regional Conference competition.

Tadiwa Madenga is a scholar of African and Black diasporic literature, gender and sexuality, and print cultures. Her research is concerned with the relationship between literature and sexuality which she traces through 20th and 21st century African book fairs and their subgenres: keynotes, book stalls, magazines, poetry.

Studying a language is an immediate way to immerse oneself in African knowledge systems.

• Why study language and culture
  
• Why study language and culture at Berkeley

Learn more: African languages at UC Berkeley

The Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley invites applications for a fulltime tenure-track Assistant Professor in Ethnomusicology with an expected start date of July 1, 2025. For more information about the position, go to https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04491. The deadline to apply is September 20, 2024. Please direct questions to Marié Abe, Committee Chair, at marie.abe@berkeley.edu.

In this post, the Department of Music recognizes Jocelyne Guilbault, Ethnomusicology Professor in the Department of Music. With a focus on traditional and popular music from the French Creole- and English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, Dr. Guilbault was also a great advocate for those studying African music.

Nicholas Newman (MPP, 2024) conducted field research in the Pita and Labé prefectures of the Fouta Djallon in Guinea in partnership with a large rural farmer’s union. The stories shared by farmers made clear the importance of the relationship between land, debt, and social reproduction.

The first time I scheduled a meeting with Linus Unah, a UC Berkeley alumnus with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, the meeting had to be rescheduled as Unah raced off to lead a small crew in filming the rescue of a manatee about to be sold.

Dear Friends of the Center for African Studies,

The International House at UC Berkeley is commemorating Black History Month through a YouTube video series. In consists of clips from residents, including many Mastercard Foundation Scholars, as well as alumni interviews by Scholar and I-House Global Community Ambassador, Excellence Joshua. More videos are added to the playlist throughout the month of February.

UC Berkeley students who join the Summer 2024 study abroad program "Pan Afrikan Social Movements: Past, Present and Future" in Ghana will receive a $1,000 scholarship! Deadline to apply is March 15, 2024.