Professor Hall's research is focused on the intellectual and social history of a region of West Africa called the Sahel, which straddles the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It encompasses the modern countries of Mauritania, Mali and Niger. Most of the research that he has carried out has been based in and around the northern Malian town of Timbuktu, in a sub-region of the Sahel called the Niger Bend. He has worked in Timbuktu because it is the site of remarkable collections of written sources in Arabic from across the Sahel and further a field in the Muslim world. His work is located at the intersection between West Africa's Muslim high intellectual culture and social and economic issues which that intellectual culture sought to address.
Professor Hall, received his Bachelors in History at the University of Toronto (1994) , his Masters at Queen's University (Canada, 1995), and his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005).
Muslim intellectual history in West and North Africa; Slavery; Social and Economic history of West and North Africa; Race; Mali; Songhay