Director's Message: Welcome to Spring 2022

January 31, 2022

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year! I write to you after returning from a trip to South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana, over the January term. It was a productive trip meeting with key partners of the Center and connecting with our institutional collaborators.

I am pleased to welcome you back for the Spring 2022 semester. While our events continue to be virtual this semester, it is wonderful to have students back on campus after the winter break, and we hope conditions will continue to improve to permit in-person activities later in the semester. I write to share our next edition of our Africa Matters at Harvard newsletter. We recap the wonderful conversations that happened last semester and encourage you to watch the recordings.

I would also like to congratulate many of those in our community for their research and writing efforts. Our CAS faculty affiliates have published books, and our CAS fellows have also published papers. You can find out more in the newsletter below.

We are also pleased to share our 2021 Annual Report, available virtually via this link. This report illustrates our activities from a fully virtual academic year 2020-21. We hope you enjoy looking back on our remote activities and seeing the wonderful accomplishments we were able to achieve during that time.

Annual Report 2022 Cover

If you are on campus, you can drop by to pick up a hard copy as well.

I look forward to this upcoming semester with the full schedule of our African Studies Workshop available here. This semester the Center will be hosting our annual Hakeem and Myma Belo-Osagie Distinguished Lecture on African Business and Entrepreneurship and Joseph Agyepong Distinguished Lecture on Public Health in Africa. We will also be welcoming our Postdoctoral Research Fellows to campus this year.

A reminder that our CAS faculty grant deadline is on April 1, and many student grant opportunities, including summer travel grants, are available as well.

Thank you for continuing to engage the Center as we work together on bringing Africa to Harvard and Harvard to Africa.

Warm wishes,

Emmanuel

 

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Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Ph.D.

Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies

Oppenheimer Faculty Director Harvard University Center for African Studies