Tavy Aherne

Tavy Aherne is the Associate Director for the African Studies Program (ASP).

Dr. Aherne is an Africanist art historian who has taught for almost thirty years and collaborated on exhibitions with national and international museums (including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of African Art, and the Musée Dapper in Paris). Dr. Aherne received her Ph.D. in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas and a Ph.D. Minor in African Studies from Indiana University. She was a member of the graduate faculty and the Faculty Senate – serving two years on the Faculty Senate Board as head of Faculty/Student Relations- at James Madison University until returning to Indiana, where she taught at DePauw University in Art History and Africana Studies. Dr. Aherne also served as an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation academic curator (2015-2017) and was a Posse Foundation Faculty Mentor (2012-2015). She served as Secretary-Treasurer on the Board of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) from 2002-2005, as an Editor on the academic journal Africa Today (2018-2022), currently serves as Chair of the African Studies Association Outreach Council (ASOC; 2018-present), and on the boards of the Association of African Studies Programs (AASP; 2023- present) and the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA; 2022-present). For the IU African Studies Program, Dr. Aherne served seven years as the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and as Interim Director of ASP and Director of Graduate Studies.

Dr. Aherne’s teaching includes diverse courses in African arts and expressive culture, African film, post-colonial theory, Museum Studies, and interdisciplinary research methodologies. Her research and writing have focused on West African aesthetic systems, African textiles, histories of trade, and teaching pedagogies. She has conducted research with Fulbhe and Bamana artists and colleagues in Guinea and Mali, as well as archival and field research in Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tonga (Polynesia), and Europe. She has led study abroad programs to Ghana and Dr. Aherne has also worked in Tanzania, where she is developing study abroad opportunities for IU students.

Dr. Aherne has co-written multiple winning grants from funding agencies including, but not limited to, National Science Foundation/Social Science Research Council, Department of Education TVI National Resource Center, and Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Institutional Grant and oversaw a Mellon Foundation Humanities grant. She has also been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council grant, was an American Fellow with the American Association of University Women, won multiple Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (for Bamanakan and Peular/Fulfuldhe), and an Edna T. Shaeffer Humanist Award.

Her teaching was recognized with yearly nominations for outstanding teaching at James Madison, and a university award for Excellence in Teaching (2002). In 2024, Aherne was a finalist for an IU Faculty/Staff Mentor Award. In 2025, Aherne received an IU Staff Merit Award for her contributions to the African Studies Program, Indiana University, and the field of African Studies through her national outreach.