News and Events

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Marieme Lo as the inaugural Director of the Centre for African Studies, effective July 1, 2023 until June 30, 2028.

Professor Marieme S. Lo, originally from Senegal, is an Associate Professor in Women and Gender Studies and African Studies. She holds a Licence from Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, a MA from the University of Dakar (Senegal) and MSc and PhD from Cornell University. She has also received numerous awards and held fellowships at the University of Oxford and Georgetown University.

Professor Lo works on intersecting research fields entwined in critical, feminist, alternative and creative epistemologies, and social justice praxis. Her publications and scholarship encompass the political economy of gender and development, female entrepreneurship, trade, and economic justice; the political economy and creative dynamism of African urban informal economies, urban poverty and inclusive urbanism particularly in African post-colonial cities; migration, vulnerability, resilience, livelihood studies and climate change in the Sahel and coastal communities at the interstices of anthropogenic risks, geopolitics, biopolitical governmentality, and extractivism.

Professor Lo served as WGSI Graduate Coordinator ( 2015-2017), African Studies Director ( 2017- 2021), a faculty mentor to students from Africa in the MasterCard Foundation Program (2017-2021) and the School of Cities Associate Director for Education (2018-2021 and 2022). She was also a member of the first Board of Governance of the Université de l’Ontario français (UOF) (2018-2021) and is currently an advisor for the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH).

In and outside academia, she has vast experience leading and assessing large scale social impacts, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral research and design projects and has collaborated with grassroots women’s organizations, civil society networks such as the West Africa Civil Society, and international organizations such as UN-Women, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Professor Lo is passionate about African art and design and is an amateur photographer.

Join us in welcoming Professor Lo in her new role!

Akwaba! Bienvenue!Dalụ, E Karo! Ek’abo, Mbote! Ebai! Habari! Kwabo! Mhoro! Molo! ⴰⵣⵓⵍ!Salam! Sawubona! Soo dhowow! مرحبا! Marhaba! Tena yistilign-ጤናይስጥልኝ! Murakaza neza! ⲙⲁⲥⲕⲁ ⲁ̄ⲅⳝⲓⲗⲟ! Tanenu-Ku!Bem-vindos|Welcome!

Join us for a Language Immersion Day — this opportunity goes beyond the classroom! Engage with academic content in real-world cultural contexts and deepen your understanding through meaningful connections.

Featured Languages: Amharic, Twi/Akan, Nubian, Lingala, Igbo, and Yoruba

When: March 1, 2025
Time: 10 am – 4 PM
Where: Wetmore Hall, New College, (300 Huron Street, Toronto)

Lunch will be provided

This talk explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance in Kenya today, asking what a view from East Africa can tell us about the shifting configurations and lived realities of post 9/11 imperial warfare. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa. Dr. Samar Al-Bulushi will explore how Kenvan Muslim activists contend with the deaths and disappearances of their fellow citizens at the hands of U.S.-trained Kenvan police. If the Kenyan state and its security partners collect information to anticipate risk and guide decision-making, so too must the subjects of surveillance and policing gather knowledge and make calculations about their own safety as they grapple with what it means to remake a world unmade by imperial warfare.

Dr. Samar Al-Bulushi is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Her book, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenva. the United States, and the War on Terror, was published by Stanford University Press in November 2024. She is a non-resident fellow at the Ouincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and previously served as a contributing editor for Africa is a Country. She has published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policv in Africa.

When: Friday, March 7, 2025
Time: 3 – 5 PM
Where: Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100A (170 St. George Street, Toronto)

Join us on Friday, January 17th from 6:00 – 9:00 PM at the William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks Street, for an evening of celebration and community care.

Enjoy exquisite African food, drumming, live music and more! This is a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with friends, meet new colleagues, and share the joys of the new year. Friends and family are all welcome—we can’t wait to see you there!

Warmest Wishes for the New Year 2025!

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) and Canada’s cooperation: perspectives on Canada’s role in “Implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)”

With special guests:

Dr. Melaku DESTA, Coordinator of the ATPC of the Regional Integration and Trade Division (RITD) at UNECA

Batanai Clemence CHIKWENE, Program Management Officer with the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) at UNECA

WHEN: Saturday, February 17, 2024 11am-12pm
WHERE: 2053 Seminar Room, 40 Willcocks St., New College (Right above Ivey Library, New College)

Reflections on the International Decade for People of African Descent Panel Discussion

The African Studies Centre invites you to attend a panel featuring invited speakers: Ms. Gaynel Curry, Independent Expert Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, United Nations & Me Tamara Thermitus, Lawyer émérite and appointed Boulton Senior Fellow, McGill University’s Faculty of Law with guests on Friday, February 9, 2024 | 3:30-PM @William Doo Auditorium.

Meet the Speakers

Ms. Gaynel Curry, Independent Expert Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, United Nations

Me Tamara Thermitus, Lawyer émérite and appointed Boulton Senior Fellow, McGill University’s Faculty of Law

Learn more about the speakers!

All are welcome to the panel and closing reception!

Organized by the African Studies Centre and co-sponsored by New College Principal’s Office and the University of T

Agency of/in African Studies: Of Naked Agency and Open Reading

The African Studies Centre invites you to attend a public lecture featuring Professor Naminata Diabate (Cornell University) on Friday, October 6th.

Notions of subjectivity and agency, both collective and individual, have haunted African studies in the Euro-American academy since its inception in the 1960s. This is so because of multiple historical (self-inflicted) injuries, including the Tran Saharan slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonization. This lecture redirects the terms of the debate by exploring defiant disrobing, women’s aggressive self-exposure in moments of social-political duress. Robust attention to this universal form of conflict management, not so much as an easily read feminist or feminine performance of contestation, but as a border-crossing story given life and sensitive to multiple interpretations in social media, academia, and beyond; yields the concept of naked agency and its connected reading praxis, open reading. Naked agency and open reading showcase the unstable nature of subjectivity qua agency, which results most particularly from the emerging and subjugating effects of our hyper-digitized age.

When: October 6, 2023 | 2 – 4 PM
Where: Jackman Humanities Building, 100A 170 St. George Street

View more event details here.

An Indigenous Maasai Response to the Climate Crisis

The African Studies Centre and the School of the Environment invite you to a talk by NELSON OLE REIYIA on Friday, September 29, 2023.

An Indigenous Maasai Response to the Climate Crisis
with Nelson Ole Reiyia
Co-founder of Nashulai Maasai Conservancy, Kenya
Global Biodiversity Warrior &
Vanguard of the Vanishing Ecosystems

When: September 29, 2023 | 5:30 – 7:00 PM
Where: Wilson Hall, Room 2053, New College, University of Toronto

View more event details here.

Looking for a great space for artistic vulnerability and expression?
Build up your confidence as a writer and a great historian for your own life and experiences and develop your storytelling voice!

No prior creative writing experience needed or required.

Dates: Tuesdays: Jan. 17th, 24th, 31st, and Feb. 7th.

Time: 6pm to 8pm

Organized by Dr. Comfort Azubuko-Udah

Register Here

The African Studies Seminar Series Presents:

Beyond decolonization and the critical: a case for precolonial history and the intricacies of violence and genocides in Africa

Presented by Felix Amoh-Siaw, doctoral candidate, Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus—UBCO) & 2022 Trudeau Foundation Scholar  

Until the Cows Come Home: Patchwork Land Reform in South Africa’s  Ranching Sector 

Presented by Alex Dyzenhaus, Ph.D., SSHRC postdoctoral researcher in the Political Science Department at the University of Toronto 

WHEN: Thursday, December 8, 2022, 2-4PM 

WHERE: 2053 Seminar Room, 20 Wilson Hall, New College

Organized by the African Studies Program at New College, University of Toronto 

Contact: Prof. Marieme Lo, Director, African Studies Program | Email: Marieme.lo@utoronto.ca     

 All Welcome! Refreshments!

Join us for the African Studies end of year party !

WHEN: THURSDAY, December 8, 2022, 6pm-9pm

WHERE: William Doo Auditorium

45 Willcocks St. (Lower Level)

Join us for delicious African food, ASCU Elimi’s Volume 3 Lauch,  Drumming, Music & more.

Family and friends are all welcome!

Event Details

By Merve Fejzula
Assistant Professor, University of Missouri

When: November 23, 2022 | 3 – 4:30 PM
Where: Room UC152, University College, University of Toronto

Event Details

Please note that this event has been postponed. New date TBA.

Talk By Professor Divine Fuh, Director of the Institute for Humanities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
When: Friday, November 18, 2022 | From 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Where: William Doo Auditorium, Room A

Talk Description

There is an underlying assumption today that Southern scholarship, especially when associated with Africa, is essentially decolonial – an idea that increasingly appears for many as intellectually bullying and associated with cancel culture. Yet, as an intellectual movement, decoloniality poses a knowledge production challenge for many scholars, particularly regarding how to translate critique into practice. Through an autoethnographic narrative account of my training and development as an anthropologist, this paper ironically asks how native scholars should respond to decoloniality. I focus on the simultaneous processes of becoming and unbecoming, and their relationship to self, insights, and the production of particularly scientific subjectivities. I am especially interested in the being and making of African anthropologists, particularly within a space in which one must unmake oneself in order legitimately to become. In the midst of decolonization, decolonial and African feminist intellectual subjectivation debates, what are the possible implications for the future of anthropological work, science and related scholarship production as natives become ethnographers? What opportunities does decoloniality offer for expanding and enriching existing anthropological archives?

Co-sponsors:   The  African Studies  Program  and  Anthropology Department

Event Details

Talk by Professor Siba Grovogui (Cornell University)
When: November 17 | 12:30 pm
Where: Canadiana Gallery (14 Queen’s Park Crescent West), CG 265 (2^nd floor)

Talk Description

There is either failure or omission in the social sciences and humanities to entertain the idea that African political actions have behind them distinct traditions of thought. This is to say that it is often assumed in the canons and beyond that African actions are not grounded in moral predicates that reflect time and the material conditions of the existence of the authors of such actions. One way to cast aside African thought, as well as their ethical and moral predicates, is to present them as legends: the result of exceptional heroic acts of bravery, foresight, and/or humanity. To counter the underlying reflex, I wish to revisit the last paragraph of Nelson Mandela’s “I’m Prepared to Die’ speech. I do so to demonstrate the manners in which the last paragraph stands as an instance and instantiation of a longstanding and uniquely African expression of humanism. Further, I wish to show how the absence of interest and acquaintance with this particular speech is also evidence of the poverty of moral and ethical thought today.

About Professor Siba Grovogui

Siba N’Zatioula Grovogui is Professor of International Relations Theory and African Political Thought at Cornell University in the United States of America. He is also the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University for 2020 and 2021. He is the author of Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (1996) and Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy: Memories of International Order and Institutions (2006). He is currently in the final phase of completion of a manuscript titled The Gaze of Copernicus: Postcolonialism, Serendipity, and the Making of the World. The manuscript offers a critique of international relations, its practices, disciplinary canons, archives, and regimes of truth as foundations for a set of propositions on postcolonial inquiries, methods, and utopias.

This event is co-sponsored by the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, the Transnational Justice Project, and the African Studies program at the University of Toronto. 

A light lunch will be served at 12:00pm in the Centre Lounge, 2nd floor of the Canadiana Gallery. 

Please note that the location does not have a working elevator. If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact us at crimsl.communications@utoronto.ca and we will do our best to make appropriate arrangements.

September 17-22, 2022

African Studies is co-sponsoring  FINTECH Masterclasses which will all happen on the 17^th Sept from 10am-1pm ET: These are great opportunities for networking and career exploration.

• Understanding the Canadian Fintech Landscape
  Taught by Nina-Mae, Head of Partnerships at Fintech Cadence
• VC Fund investing in African Tech
  Taught by Hany Assaad of Co-Founder and Chief Portfolio & Risk Officer at Avanz Capital, former Chief Investment Officer at the IFC for Emerging Markets
• Financial Literacy for Youth and Newcomers
  Taught by Andre Lewis, VP Treasury of DUCA Credit Union and Leighton Watson, Regional Sales Manager at Pineapple