Tavy Aherne is associate director of the African Studies Program (ASP) and director of undergraduate studies for the ASP at Indiana University. An art historian, her research has focused on West African aesthetic systems, African textiles and trade, and teaching pedagogies. She has collaborated on exhibitions with national and international museums.
Benjamin Ale-Ebrahim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist who studies language, social media, gender and sexuality, and Islam. His dissertation research focuses on the relationship between internet use and social change in Morocco, particularly in regards to changing conceptions of gender and sexuality.
Beth Buggenhagen is associate professor of Anthropology at Indiana University. She writes about visual culture, value, gender, and Islam in West Africa. Publications include Muslim Families in Global Senegal (2012), an edited volume with Anne Maria Makhulu and Stephen Jackson, Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities (2010), and numerous journal articles.
Sergio Fernandez is an associate professor at Indiana University and an expert in the fields of public management and organization theory, with a focus on employee empowerment, representative bureaucracy in the U.S. and South Africa, organizational change and innovation, public sector leadership, and government outsourcing.
Maria Grosz-Ngaté is a research scientist in African Studies at Indiana University. Her areas of interest include political economy with a focus on social transformation and migration; Muslim communities in Senegal and Mali; and knowledge production in and on Africa. Her publications include Gendered Encounters and Africa, Fourth Edition.
Eileen Juliene is professor of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and African Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She teaches and publishes primarily on the literatures and cultures of Africa, the Americas and France in their interrelationships with particular attention to the factors of colonialism, decolonization, and contemporary political and economic processes.
Asher Lubotzky is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Indiana University. His Ph.D. dissertation explores the early relationship between the State of Israel and Southern Africa (1948-1976) as well as different South African interpretations of Zionism. Asher is the recipient of the Gerda Henkel Ph.D. Scholarship for 2021-2023.
Lauren M. MacLean is the Arthur F. Bentley Chair and professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Her research focuses on the political economy of state formation, public service provision, and democratic citizenship in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Kenya. Her current project as a Carnegie Fellow focuses on the energy sector and climate change.
Kevin Taber recently earned his PhD in political science from Indiana University and will be joining the faculty of Purdue University as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the academic year. His research focuses on contemporary African migration and diaspora communities and their impact on development, governance, and human security in their places of origin, as well as the implications these dynamics have for Global North-South relations.
Esi E. Thompson is an assistant Professor with the Media School at Indiana University. Her research focuses on health risk and crisis communication primarily in West Africa (Ghana and Liberia) and more recently in the US. Her current project addresses risk perceptions and misinformation surrounding Covid-19.
Hilary Warner-Evans, is the managing editor of Africa Today, is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Her research focuses primarily on folk songs in Northeastern North America, particularly as it relates to concepts of sense of place, tradition, and identity.
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies