Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza "is Head of the Department of African American Studies, Professor of African American Studies and History and the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and formerly Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for eight years. He has worked at five other universities in Malawi, Kenya, Jamaica, Canada, and the United States. He is also currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and an Adjunct Professor of History and African and African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He was elected Vice-President of the (U.S.) African Studies Association for 2007-2008 and will serve as President in 2008-2009.

"He specializes in African economic, social and intellectual history, as well as development studies, gender studies, and diaspora studies. He has published more than a hundred essays and articles and authored or edited more than two dozen books including most recently The Roots of African Conflicts (2007); The Resolution of African Conflicts (2007); The Study of Africa (2 volumes, 2007); African Universities in the Twenty-First Century (2 volumes, 2004); Human Rights, the Rule of Law and Development in Africa (2004); and Rethinking Africa's Globalization (2003). He also served as an associate editor of the six-volume, New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2005). Several of his books have won awards including the 1994 Noma Award for A Modern Economic History of Africa (1993), the 1998 Special Commendation of the Noma Award for Manufacturing African Studies and Crises (1997), the 2003 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and 2004 Honorable Mention of the Conover-Porter Award for Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century African History (2002). He has also published three works of fiction. He has raised nearly five million dollars in research and institutional grants from various private foundations and public agencies. Currently, he is working on a global project on African diasporas in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, funded by a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. He serves on the editorial boards of fifteen journals and book series."

Related Sourcewatch

 * Philip J. McConnaughay - coeditor