News

We are sad to learn that the great Kenya author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, passed away on 28 May 2025 at age 87. He was also Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and the director of the International Center for Writing and Translation. We appreciate his dedication to championing local languages.

Tobias Warner became professor of French and Comparative Literature at UC Davis in 2012 after completing his PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor Karl Britto.

The Maghrib Studies Initiative, a joint venture of the Centers for African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, aims to bring together faculty and students at Berkeley with an interest in North Africa. The initiative aims to organize academic events and help develop teaching materials on the Maghrib that are tailored for the needs of professors, instructors, researchers and students at UC Berkeley to teach and learn about the region.

Former Rocca fellow Bhavya Joshi's research focuses on the utilization and delivery of reproductive health services in Kakuma refugee camp.

              Christine Wilkinson is a conservation scientist specializing in carnivore and urban ecologies.

It is a time of transitions at the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Martha Saavedra will retire this year. The search for a new Associate Director (Academic Coordinator II) is underway. Full job description and application details: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04811. The first review date is Thursday, Mar 20, 2025 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time) with the final date on Sunday, Apr 13, 2025 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time).

Four gifted first-year students — Daniel Ekonde of Cameroon, James Mawien Manyuol of South Sudan, Victor Ochieng of Kenya and Jennifer Ugwa of Nigeria — are this year’s Mastercard Foundation Scholars at UC Berkeley Journalism, part of a campuswide program in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation that covers the educational costs of students seeking master’s degrees.

Thelma Rowell, a pioneering British primatologist, died on December 10, 2024, in Yorkshire, UK. She was 89 years old. Dr. Rowell joined the Berkeley faculty in 1974 as a member of the Department of Zoology and, later, the Department of Integrative Biology. She retired from the Berkeley faculty in 1994

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 Kenya with ties to 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.