Maria Grosz-Ngaté WARA President

Maria Grosz-Ngaté is Associate Director of the African Studies Program and a member of the Anthropology graduate faculty at Indiana University . Her long-term research in Mali has focused on rural social and cultural transformation and has resulted in conference paper presentations, articles, and encyclopedia pieces. Some of her work has appeared in the American Ethnologist , Ethnology , and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review . She co-edited Gendered Encounters: Challenging Cultural Boundaries and Social Hierarchies in Africa (Routledge, 1997) with the late Omari Kokole. Her interest in the production of knowledge and the representation of Africa has led to an article in the Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, and in a forthcoming edited collection on Heinrich Barth. She is co-editor of the journal Africa Today .

Dr. Grosz-Ngaté's links with Senegal began with archival research for her dissertation and have expanded to collaborations with colleagues at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in recent years. She developed a summer study abroad program in cooperation with historian Babacar Fall, based at UCAD. The program is now partnered with the University of Oregon and accepts students from across the United States . She has begun new collaborative research on the Qadiriyya spiritual center of Njaassaan sponsored by the Michigan State-Harvard University project Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa , in which WARA is also a partner.Maria Grosz-Ngaté has been a member of WARA and of MANSA (Mande Studies Association) for many years. She served on the African Studies Association Board of Directors from 2002-05.

James Essegbey, Vice President

Dr James Essegbey is assistant professor of Akan and Linguistics at the Department of African and Asian Language Languages and Literatures, University of Florida. He obtained his PhD degree from Leiden University after a three-year PhD fellowship with the Cognitive and Anthropology Research (now Language and Cognition) Group at the Max-Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He then worked at the Department of African Languages and Cultures, first as a lecturer of Ewe and African Linguistics, and then as a postdoctoral research fellow. Dr Essegbey's research interests are language description and languages and cultures in contact, specifically creoles and multilingualism. He has been conducting research on the influence of the Gbe languages spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin, on the creoles of Suriname, and the documentation of Nyangbo, a minority language spoken in Ghana. He has also begun research on the multilingual situation in Accra, Ghana. Dr. Essegbey's publications include Auxiliaries in serialising languages: on COME and GO verbs in Sranan and Ewe, in Lingua 114, 473-494, and Pointing left in Ghana: how a taboo on the use of the left hand influences gestural practices in Gesture 1 (1), 73-95 which he co-authored with Sotaro Kita.

Jennifer Yanco, WARA U.S. Director

Dr. Yanco is a research fellow at the African Studies Center at Boston University, where she taught in the African language program for a number of years, focusing on curriculum development for Lingala, Hausa, and Setswana. She has served as interim African language coordinator at Boston University and has organized and taught intensive summer language programs in both Hausa and Setswana. Yanco spent many years in Niger, involved in various aspects of language education and served for two years as a Fulbright senior lecturer in Linguistics at the Université de Niamey. She holds a masters degree from the Harvard School of Public Health where she specialized in the social and political determinants of health. Her current work developing anti-racism curricula for schools and adult education programs stems from the conviction that, of all the determinants of health, racism continues to have the most devastating, widespread, and long-term effects, making it the most serious public health issue facing us. Dr. Yanco has a Ph.D. in Linguistics and African Studies from Indiana University.

Ousmane Sène, Director of WARC

Dr. Sène is an associate professor of Literature (African and African-American) in the Department of English, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal. He chaired the department from 1988 to 1998. He is an alumnus of Université Cheikh Anta Diop where he earned his B.A. and M.A. in English before going to Paris for a Ph.D. in Commonwealth Literatures at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Saint Cloud and Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III. He has been serving in the Department of English of Université Cheikh Anta Diop since his return from Paris in 1983. Sène is a frequent visitor to the United States, primarily for teaching and research purposes. He was a senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Florida in 1992-93. Before and subsequently he has served as visiting professor in several U.S. universities such as Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, Loyola Marymount University, Wofford and Converse Colleges, Beloit College, and more. Sène has substantial experience in the area of administration, first as chair of the Department of English in Dakar (3,500 students) and then as study abroad program administrator in Senegal for a number of U.S. universities. He is the author of several publications on issues relating to literature and the social sciences and is a regular contributor to Senegalese daily newspapers and radio and television programs. Sène has also worked as a free-lance translator for several international institutions, such as the Panafrican News Agency (Pana), U.N. representations in Dakar, USAID, and several other development-oriented NGO's. Prior to being appointed Director of the West African Research Center, Sène was the President of AROA (Association de Recherche Ouest Africaine).

Wendy Wilson Fall, WARA Secretary

Wendy Wilson Fall is an Associate Professor in Pan African Studies and Adjunct in Anthropology at Kent State University . Before moving to Kent , Ohio , Dr. Wilson-Fall was Director of the West African Research Center, where she served for five years. Wilson-Fall has her PhD from Howard University 's African Studies Center (1984), where her concentration was in Social Anthropology. She received her Masters from Amadu Bello University in Zaria , Nigeria . Dr. Wilson has published articles on Fulani pastoralists and herding ( Journal of African Philosophy, Nomadic Peoples ), as well as papers and monographs on various rural development issues ( Series on Senegal , Drylands Research Institute, U.K. , and in Zartman. Johns Hopkins University . SAIS . 1999, and Diop. Karthala, Paris. 2002). Dr. Wilson is a participant in the UCLA based project “The Sahara Crossroads Initiative” which seeks to examine current paradigms on studies of Saharan socio-economic history and culture. Other recent work includes research on people of Afro-Malagasy descent in African diaspora communities in the Americas , particularly in urban and rural communities in eastern and central Virginia . Part of this project is a documentary film and book on family narratives of such African American families, who descend from slaves which arrived in the 18 th century and immigrants who came to Virginia in the mid 19 th century through Christian mission networks. Dr. Wilson is a recipient of the Chevalier de l'Ordre Nationale of the Republic of Niger , a fellowship from the Rockefeller Library at the Williamsburg Foundation ( Virginia , 2005), and selected scholar for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities ( Hanover , 2004).

Jemadari Kamara , WARA Treasurer

Jemadari Kamara is the co-director of the Center for African, Caribbean and Community Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). The center is involved in educational, environmental, economic and community development projects in the Caribbean , West Africa and urban America . He also serves as a senior fellow in the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and on the faculty of the Africana Studies Department at UMB which he chaired from 1996-2001. He first became involved with West Africa attending Fourah Bay College in 1969. Subsequently, he has continued to live and work throughout the region teaching on senior Fulbright assignments at the Universite Nationale du Benin (Cotonou 1985-1987) and most recently at Universite Gaston Berger (UGB - St. Louis, Senegal 2001-2002). During his tenure at UGB he co-directed a community development project establishing a community resource center in the St.Louis region. Also, he has served as the chairman of the Massachusetts delegation to the National Summit on Africa/Africa Society. Of particular interest has been his ongoing work using photovoltaic (solar) systems for rural electrification and economic development. Most recently, Kamara has co-directed a youth leadership development program in Senegal and Benin , YES (Youth Education and Sports) with Africa , which has over 1000 youth participants. Kamara came to UMB as dean of the College of Public and Community Service (1988-1993). Kamara's most recent publication includes contributions from throughout Africa and the Diaspora, The State of the Race–Creating Our 21 st Century (2004).