Director, African Studies Program
(Please note that Prof. Lo is on leave from January - June 2023)

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.  Prof. Lo works on intersecting research fields entwined in critical, 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. Her current  collaborative project extends her  earlier work and engagement on indigenous rights and  environmental justice along the Chad-Cameroon pipeline.

Prof. 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).

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).

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