African Studies Program

Liam James Kingsley is a Ph.D. student in African History and a Ph.D. minor in African Studies. He graduated from the State University of New York at Potsdam with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Music in Musical Studies—Composition. His research interests include postcolonialism, state formation, queerness, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa. He is currently researching for his dissertation, which will focus on the Namibian government's response to HIV/AIDS epidemic, arguing that it served as a legitimating tool that shaped the logics, rationalities, and modes of governance the fledgling state—which gained independence from South Africa in 1990—came to assume.