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Ambassadors Distinguished Scholars Program

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

No abstract provided.

“Youth Unemployment And Terrorism: Empirical Findings And Policy Implication”, Soji Adelaja

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

No abstract provided.

Labor And Vulnerability Among Pastoralists In Northern Kenya, Bilinda Straight

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA)

The research preliminarily examines the embodied implications of a vulnerable relationship –Samburu grandparents and their young caregivers in the context of contemporary intercommunity violence, globalization, and resource scarcity. While children are recognized caregivers of adults in numerous contexts cross-culturally, including in developed nations like the U.S. and Britain, research on this issue is scant within anthropology and recent in other fields such as geography, medicine, and public health, where it has developed primarily since the 1990s.

Doing Sensitive Research Cross-Cultural Contexts: Reflections From Fieldwork, Federica De Sisto

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. De Sisto holds a Ph.D. in peace studies from Trinity University. She is a former visiting fellow at the Arthur Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at the University of Manitoba, Canada and at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. Dr. De Sisto is currently involved in a European Union reconciliation project between Muslim and Christian communities in Northern Nigeria. Her research and teaching interests include conflict transformation and peace building, governance, minorities' rights, gender and development, migration and refugee studies.

Expanding Collaborations And Institutional Linkages Between U.S. And Ethiopian Universities, Admasu Tsegaye

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. Admasu Tsegaye, president and associate professor of Addis Ababa University since March 2011, is currently serving as a Fulbright Scholar at Oklahoma State University. His research and journal articles focus on various aspects of biodiversity, genetic diversity and physiology of indigenous crops.

Sustainable Chemistry And Business In The United States And Africa, Mo Hunsen

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. Mo Hunsen is chair of the Department of Chemistry at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. His research interests focus on green chemical and enzymatic catalysis in carbohydrate and polymer chemistry. His research also involves the use of natural product based prevention of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Hunsen has a passion for exploring how green and sustainable chemistry and technology could serve as a platform for green businesses that transform cheap and abundant natural resources to value-added products. He is currently associate editor of Green and Sustainable Chemistry and on the editorial board of Organic Chemistry Current Research, and …

Africa And The Perversities Of International Capital Flows, Howard Stein

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. Howard Stein is a professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Afro-American and African Studies and he also teaches in the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health.

A development economist educated in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, Dr. Stein has taught in both Asia and Africa. His research has focused on foreign aid, finance and development, structural adjustment, health and development and industrial policy.

Africa After 9/11: Rethinking U.S. Definitions And Policies, David Wiley

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

David Wiley (Ph.D. Princeton) is a professor of sociology and African studies at Michigan State University. He served as director of the African Studies Centers at Michigan State University (1978-08) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (1972-77). His research has focused on Zambia (urban housing and development); Zimbabwe (race relations, religious movements); Kenya (participatory fisheries management); South Africa (urban environment) as a Fulbright-Hays Senior Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, as well as internationalization and less commonly taught languages in the U.S. and, currently, militarization in Africa. His most recent publication is “International and Language Education for a Global Future: Fifty Years …

Distinguished Lectures On Africa-Spring 2012, Center For African Development Policy Research

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Poster for Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. Bilinda Straight, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Western Michigan University

Dr. Theodore Vestal, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Oklahoma State University

Dr. David Wiley, Professor of Sociology, Former Director of African Studies Center, Michigan State University

Ethiopian-American Relations During The Reign Of Emperor Haile Selassie, 1930-1974, Theodore Vestal

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Theodore M. “Ted” Vestal, (Ph.D., Stanford) is professor emeritus of political science at Oklahoma State University and author of “The Lion of Judah in the New World: Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shaping of Americans’ Attitudes toward Africa” (Preager Publishing, 2011). In 1964-66 he served as a Peace Corps executive in Ethiopia and has maintained an academic interest in the country and its people ever since. His book, “Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State,” was published in 1999” (Preager Publishing). Vestal has served as an expert witness in over 115 political asylum cases of Ethiopians and Eritreans since …

Health Outcomes Of Inter-Community Violence In Three Northern Kenyan Pastoralist Communities, Bilinda Straight

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Bilinda Straight (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1997) is associate professor of Anthropology at Western Michigan University. She works with Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya on consciousness, cosmology, material culture, gender, health, and violence. She has published scholarly articles in a variety of journals and edited volumes. She is the editor of “Women on the Verge of Home” (SUNY, 2005), and author of “Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Fulbright and National Science Foundation.

Authoritarianism And Economic Development: Ethiopia's Investment Gamble, Chuck Schaefer

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Prior to his positions at Valparaiso University, Dr. Schaefer taught at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Lecturer and has since focused his research in Ethiopia. As an economic historian, Dr. Schaefer analyzes Ethiopia’s integration into the world economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, looking strictly at economic indices such as trade, capital creation, money supply and credit and lending in order to partially answer the question: Why is Ethiopia poor? His research has since shifted to answer the question: Why is there conflict in Ethiopia and what can be done about it? This research …

Partners For Progress And Modernization: American—Ethiopian Relations, Assefa Mehretu

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Flyer for public lecture includes biographical information about the speaker.

U.S. Policy Towards The Horn Of Africa, David Shinn

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Ambassador David Shinn served for 37 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments at embassies in Lebanon, Kenya and Tanzania; deputy chief of mission in Mauritania, Cameroon and Sudan; and ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. His State Department assignments included assistant desk officer for Ethiopia, desk officer for Somalia, Djibouti, Uganda and Tanzania; coordinator for Somalia during the international intervention in the early 1990s; and director of East African, Horn of Africa and Indian Ocean Island affairs. He writes extensively in academic and policy journals on the Horn of Africa and China-Africa relations and speaks around the world …

Improving Higher Education In Africa: Lessons From Universities In Ethiopia And Egypt, Frank H. Witt

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Flyer for public lecture includes biographical information about the speaker.