Columbia University
The African History Workshop at Columbia University, sponsored by the Department of History, was started in 2017. It welcomes participants from the New York area and around the world in a hybrid format. The workshop is intended as a constructive space in which scholars at all stages of their careers can get feedback on work-in-progress. If you would like to be added to the mailing list or are interested in workshopping a piece, please contact the current co-convenors, Lynder Atieno Ogembo (lao2133@columbia.edu) and Rhiannon Stephens (r.stephens@columbia.edu).
Current Workshops
2025-2026
Co-convenors: Lynder Atieno Ogembo and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 24:
Shiyuka Karani, Lecturer, Department of History, Archaeology and Political Studies, Kenyatta University
“Pokot Reaction to British Colonial Rule, c. 1900-1950.”
Oct 15:
Lynder Atieno Ogembo, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Politics of Invention of Tradition: The Luo Union and Changes in the Luo Family Structure during the Colonial Period, 1920-1950”
Dec 10:
Hugo Logez, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Afro-Atlantic families in colonial Dahomey, 1880s-1960s”
Schedule of Past Workshops
2024-2025
Co-convenors: Lorna Jepkoech Kimaiyo and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 18:
Conor Wilkinson, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Inheritance, Innovation, and Interaction: Early Bantu Communities along the Kivu–Nyanza Axis.”
Oct 16:
Lorna Jepkoech Kimaiyo, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Sport and the Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identity among the Kalenjin of Western Kenya, 1940-1990.”
Feb 5:
Laura Fair, Professor, Department of MESAAS, Columbia University
“A Popular History of Swahili Food, Farming and Dietary Diseases”
Apr 2:
Lacy Feigh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows, Princeton University
“Guiding Empires: Enslaved Knowledge and the Making of Imperial Ethiopia.”
Apr 23:
Abosede George, Associate Professor, Department of History, Barnard College and Columbia University
“Repatriations to Africa: Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, and Nigeria as Diasporic Sites.”
2023-2024
Co-convenors: Lorna Jepkoech Kimaiyo and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 14:
Informal research exchange
Oct 12:
Tanvi Kapoor, PhD Student, Department of History, New York University
“Mourning as a Devotional Form: The Uncanny Shi’i Mosque in Zanzibar.”
Nov 16:
Lorna Jepkoech Kimaiyo, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“‘Kenya’s Running Tribe’: Cultivating Identity through Sports in Kenya, 1940-1960s.”
Feb 23:
Siga Maguiraga, PhD Student, Department of History, European University Institute
“Uncovering Invisible Actors in North and West Africa.”
Mar 29:
Belinda Archibong, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Barnard College and Columbia University
“When Women March: The Effects of Women-Led Protests on Gender Gaps in Political Participation.”
Apr 26:
Charlotte Walker-Said, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
“Christianity in a Neocolonial Political Landscape: The French Catholic Church in Chad and Central African Republic: 1955-1965.”
May 10:
Zachary Fleishman, PhD Student, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
“‘Ten to Ten’: Producing and Performing Urban belonging under Curfew in South Africa, 1869-1986.”
2022-2023
Co-convenors: Conor Wilkinson, Lorna Jepkoech Kimaiyo, and Rhiannon Stephens
Dec 2:
Devon Golaszewski, Postdoctoral Fellow, Program in the History of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and Visiting Assistant Professor of History at UCLA
“Reproductive Interventions as Medicine in Pre-Colonial and Early Colonial Soudan Français (Mali).”
Jan 20:
Thomas Zuber, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“‘By the Book and by the Plow’: Catholic Developmentalism and Rural Animation in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Feb 17:
Jealool Amari, PhD Student, Department of MESAAS, Columbia University
“Languaging Mombasa: Translation, Pedagogy, and Conceptual History in East Africa.”
Mar 24:
Idriss Fofana, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“The Two Faces of Franco-Sudanian Treaties: The Peripheral Practice of Ratification as Evidence of Transregional International Law in the Nineteenth Century.”
Apr 14:
Jessie Cohen, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“‘People Lacked Nothing Because Everything was There’: Fertility Management and Family Planning Advocacy During the Nkrumah years.”
May 5:
Luz Colpa, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Bitter Memories, Emotional Communities: Regulating the Franco-African Family in France and West Africa 1940-1946.”
2021-2022
Co-convenors: Conor Wilkinson and Rhiannon Stephens
Oct 15:
Jessie Cohen, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
Grant Proposal
Dec 10:
Rebecca Glade, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“The ‘Technocratic’ Balance: Big Umbrella Government and the Struggles Against It, 1972-1977.”
Feb 25:
Thomas Zuber, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Children of the Revolution: Debating Sankarist ‘Self-Adjustment’ and Redistribution in 1980s Burkina Faso”
Mar 25:
Gregory Mann, Professor, Department of History, Columbia University
“Born under Punches: Colonialism’s Infrastructure”
Apr 29:
Jealool Amari, PhD Student, Department of MESAAS, Columbia University
“Keeping Time: Temporality, Continuity, and Rupture in Twentieth-Century Mombasa.”
2020-2021
Co-convenors: Conor Wilkinson and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 18:
Reading and Discussion: K.O. Diké, “African History and Self-Government,” West Africa 37 (Feb – Mar 1953).
Oct 2:
Reading and Discussion: Jean M. Allman, “#HerskovitsMustFall? A Meditation on Whiteness, African Studies, and the Unfinished Business of 1968,” African Studies Review 62, no. 3 (2019)
& Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe, “African Scholars, African Studies and Knowledge Production on Africa,” Africa 86, no. 2 (2016).
Oct 16:
Grant Proposal Workshop for PhD Students
Nov 13:
Jessie Cohen, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“The Mother’s Union and Family Planning, 1962-1979.”
Dec 4:
William Fitzsimons, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, Northwestern University
“Introduction: Republicanism, Wealth-in-People, Decentralization, and the ‘Personalized’ in African Politics.”
Dec 11:
Abosede Geoge, Associate Professor, Department of History, Barnard College and Columbia University
“Education and Work.”
Jan 22:
Reading and Discussion: “AHR conversation: Black Internationalism,” American Historical Review 125, no. 5 (2020).
Feb 5:
Belinda Archibong, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Barnard College
“Protest Matters: The Redistributive Effects of Protests on Intergovernmental Transfers Under Revenue Sharing Arrangements.” (co-authored with Tom Moerenhout, Evans Osabuohien, and Francis Annan)
Feb 19:
Luz Colpa, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Marriage: A Dream Deferred? Christian Marriage among Educated Elites in 1940s French West Africa.”
Mar 12:
Thomas Zuber, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Formulating an Administrative Motherhood: Social Services and New Models of the Family (1958-1967).”
Mar 26:
Rebecca Glade, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“On Round Tables and Expanding Violence: Sudan’s Second Parliamentary Period, 1964-1969”
Apr 9:
Fabian Krautwald, PhD Student, Department of History, Princeton University
“‘A Beautiful Tree That Has Beautiful Fruit”? African Christians and the End of German Colonialism in Tanzania.”
2019-2020
Co-convenors: Conor Wilkinson and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 27:
Introduction to Grant Writing for PhD Students
Oct 21:
Grant Proposal Workshop for PhD Students
Dec 16:
Devon Golaszewski, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Mesdames, Missionaries, and Midwives: Nongovernmental Labor and Biomedical Maternal Health 1935-1965.”
Feb 28:
Yayra Sumah, PhD Student, Department of MESAAS, Columbia University
“Healing the Kongo Dead: The Movement of Simon Kimbangu in Belgian Congo (1921-1935)”
Apr 3:
Rhiannon Stephens, Associate Professor, Department of History, Columbia University
“Excavating Ideas about Wealth and Poverty before the 11th Century.”
Apr 24:
Halimat Somotan, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“‘Lagos State is a Place for all?’ Urban Residents, Military Administration, and the Making of Lagos State, 1967-75.”
May 1:
Fabian Krautwald, PhD Student, Department of History, Princeton University
“For the Record – Genocide, History, and Memories of German Colonialism in South West Africa, c. 1915-1966.”
May 29:
Reading and Discussion: “Editors’ Introduction to the Virtual Special Issue on Epidemics and Public Health: Covid-19 and African History,” Journal of African History, 2020
Jun 26:
Digital and Public History Reading and Discussion: Anna Adima, “Stay Home and Go to the Museum,” African Arguments (8 May, 2020); reports on work in Khartoum and Bamako from Rebecca Glade and Devon Golaszewski, PhD Students, Department of History, Columbia University
Jul 10:
Workshop: Teaching African History Online
Aug 8:
Idriss Fofana, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“The “Trans-Soudanian” Railway and the Plural Labor Regime in the Western Sahel.”
2018-2019
Co-convenors: Thomas Zuber and Rhiannon Stephens
Sep 14:
Introduction to Grant Writing for PhD Students
Oct 12:
Grant Proposal Workshop for PhD Students
Jan 25:
Christopher Brown, Professor, Department of History, Columbia University
“War and Trade on the Senegal Coast.”
Apr 12:
Raevin Jimenez, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of History, University of Michigan
“Guard against the Cannibals: Tradition and Ideologies of Civilization in South Africa, 9th-19th Century.” [Co-sponsored with the Workshop on Time and Temporality in Africa]
May 10:
Reading and Discussion: Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, “What Gender is Motherhood?”
2017-2018
Co-convenors: Thomas Zuber and Rhiannon Stephens
Oct 22:
Sarah Runcie, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Geography and Philosophy, University of Louisiana Lafayette
“Regions of Empire, Regions of Health: Decolonization and Medicine in Cameroon and Central Africa.”
Dec 8:
Gregory Mann, Professor, Department of History, Columbia University
“Africa, France, and the Future: Exile in Ndjole (Gabon), ca. 1900.”
Mar 30:
Devon Golaszewski, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“Life’s Three Joys: Nuptial Counseling as Delegated Mothering.”
Apr 27:
Halimat Somotan, PhD Student, Department of History, Columbia University
“The Transformation of Lagos and Contestations over Belonging, 1946-1951.”