Join us for our in-person African Studies Workshop! The workshop series is a scholarly space for Africa-centered research, offering a diverse range of topics and scholarly backgrounds to explore historical and current conditions.
APRIL 13, 2026
Speaker: ChepchirChir Tirop, Assistant Professor of History, Boston University
Title: "Beyond the Track: Doping, Morality, and Legacy in Modern Kenya."
Bio: Chepchirchir Tirop is a historian of Kenya, East Africa, and the Indian Ocean world. She is primarily interested in questions of post-independence nationalism. Specifically, she seeks to understand how different understandings of Kenyan identity and Kenyanness have been articulated through culture. Her previous work has looked at how Indian diaspora in Kenya uses different cultural forms and sites such as museum exhibits, music and literary forms to craft and claim Kenyan identity. Her current work explores the role of athletics in nation building in Kenyan history. In addition to histories of sports and nationalism, this work is in conversation with labor histories and histories of the body to think through athletes' work and performance on local and global stages. Her work has appeared in publications such as Africa is a Country, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, The Journal of African History. She is currently a professor of African History at Boston University.
Discussant: David Glovsky, Asst. Professor, Harvard University
If you are in Cambridge/Boston, we encourage you to join us in the Seminar Room at the Harvard Center for African Studies. If you are joining us virtually, please register here on Zoom. Once you register, you will receive the Zoom Link in your email inbox.
For future workshops, please join our ASW mailing list. All speakers are listed below.