Faculty
Liz MacGonagle is an African historian in the Departments of History and African & African-American Studies. In her research, she crosses historical, geographical, and theoretical boundaries to link nation, culture, and ethnicity to processes of identity formation in African and Diasporan settings.
Peter Ojiambo is an Assistant Professor of African & African-American Studies. His research focuses on African education, especially in studies on Starehe Boys Center and School of Kenya. He has published in this area and on education, democracy and development. His area of teaching is KiSwahili and he has developed a KiSwahili teaching website. Dr. Ojiambo has held teaching positions at Ohio University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Cécile Accilien is Associate Professor of Haitian Studies and Director of the Institute of Haitian Studies in the Department of African and African-American Studies. Her primary areas of interest include Haitian Studies, Gender Studies and Film Studies.
Glenn Adams conducts research in African and other settings outside the Euro American mainstream of psychological science.
Professor Agadjanian (PhD University of Southern California; Foundation Distinguished Professor) conducts research on various aspects of social and demographic change in developing and transitional settings. He has studied migration, sexual and reproductive behavior, gender, ethnicity, and religion. He has directed several large projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, United States Agency for International Development, and other agencies in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Eurasia (Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia). He has published in several languages in leading international scholarly outlets.
Shawn Leigh Alexander's area of research concentration is African American social and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Professor Asiedu’s research focuses on Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Aid and HIV/AIDS. She teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in Development and International Economics. She has received several teaching/mentoring awards at the University of Kansas, including The Outstanding Woman Educator Award, Kemper Teaching Award, Byron Shutz Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Woman of Distinction Award.
Raj Bhala's research and teaching focus on international trade law, and Islamic Law.
Dr. Britton's major research interest is in gender and politics in Africa. Her research and writing examine how gender is utilized as a site of mobilization for women's social and political advancement, particularly in democratizing contexts.
Marie Grace Brown researches and teaches the modern Middle East with a special interest in women’s activism and national movements. Her current book project examines northern Sudanese women’s use of traditional dress to craft their gendered and national identities during Sudan’s independence movement of the 1950s.
In his research and teaching, Byron Caminero-Santangelo focuses on the relationships among language, literature, and pressing issues of justice, freedom, and sustainability in Africa.
Abel Chikanda (Ph.D., University of Western Ontario) is an Assistant Professor of African & African-American Studies and Geography. His main research and teaching interests include migration and development, refugee movement, food security, and the informal sector in Africa. He has held teaching positions at several universities in Canada including Western University, Queen’s University and the University of Waterloo.
Professor Gerschultz’s research and teaching interests span modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Middle East, the linkages between textiles, gender, and materiality, and the sociopolitical dynamics of artists’ networks.
Research Areas: Biological anthropology, human population biology, human growth and development, maternal and child health and nutrition, metabolic adaptation, pastoralists; East Africa
Dr. Majid Hannoum lectures on North African and Arab societies, especially in the areas of Islamic social and political movements; Islam, colonialism, and nationalism in North Africa; and religion, power, and sexuality in Arab societies.
Randal Jelks' research and writing interests are in the areas of African American religious history, the African Diaspora, urban, and civil Rights History.
Prof Kelly specializes in contemporary French literature, the interrelationship of the arts, and French cinema. He regularly teaches courses in those fields. In poetry, novel, autofiction, and film, he is particularly interested in the conjuncture of tactile expression and sequencing (gesture, rhythm, paronomasia, image, sound and/or silence, pov, montage, collage, strophes or experiments in visual and writerly grouping of verse, plot events, images, maxims) with broader questions of self-crafting and ideology (liberations, resistances, human rights, social palimpsests and registers, national and transnational political thought, utopias and dystopias).
Professor Lang’s main research and teaching areas are African American working-class and labor history, the Black Freedom Movement, and black urban communities in the twentieth-century Midwest.
Beverly Mack is a Professor of African Studies in the Department of African and African American Studies, was the Director of KASC from 2011-2013, and a Courtesy Professor of Religious Studies. She regularly teaches the following courses: Women and Islam, Muslim Women's Autobiography, African Women Writers, and Islamic (Sufi) Literature. She has conducted extended field research in Kano, Nigeria, and Fes, Morocco, shorter research periods in Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Guinea-Conakry, and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone. She has published extensively on African literature and Muslim women's lives in West Africa.
Professor Obadare's reasearch focuses on: Transnational Migration, Comparative Societies, Civil Society, Social Change, and Development in Africa.
Dr. Rhine's research focuses on the transnational flows of policies, professionals, technologies and resources devoted to intervening in global health problems in West Africa. She is particularly interested in understanding how medical technologies transform the ways individuals think about themselves and experience their bodies, as well as the ways they reconfigure families and social relationships.
Dr. Peter Ukpokodu lectures on African and African-American Theatre, African film, and African culture (especially traditional religion and thought), among others.
Stacey Vanderhurst is a cultural anthropologist specializing in gender, migration, and governance. She earned a PhD from Brown University and then served as the Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Law, Culture, and Society at Indiana University’s Michael Maurer School of Law. She joined the WGSS faculty in Fall 2015.
Antje Ziethen is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Kansas. She specializes in global literature in French, with a particular focus on (urban) space, migration, transnationalism, gender, and modernity. Her research deals with different geographical areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, Québec, and Acadia.
Dr Anatol's research focuses on Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Literature, especially 20th- and 21st-century women’s writing, African American Literature, and Children’s and Young Adult Literature, particularly representations of race and gender in narratives for young people.
Andrew Bentley's research Interests include marine fishes of the Indo-Pacific, wet collection standards and protocols, dangerous goods shipping for natural history collections, and Ichthyology Collection Management.
Dr. Birch's research interests include Strategic Management, International Business, International Trade and Investment, and Business in Latin America.
Anthony Bolden's teaching and research interests include African-American music, African-American cultural studies, popular culture, African literature, and ethnic-American literature. He has published extensively on Funk and Blues.
Islamic Studies; the role of the ‘ulamā’ in contemporary Islam; popular religion; media and religion
His interests include Social relations in Amazonian rural development, Expansion of soybean production in Amazonia, and Development and the Politics of Scale.
Professor Buttorff's research and teaching interests include game theory, political research methods, and OLS regression.
Jacob M. Dakon, violinist, is an Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Kansas and a Research Fellow with the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Brian Daldorph teaches creative writing, literature, and writing classes in the English department. He has also taught in Japan, Senegal, and England. His two books of poems, The Holocaust and Hiroshima: Poems, and Outcasts, were both published by Mid-America Press. He edits Coal City Review. His poems, stories, articles, and reviews have been widely published.
Dr Egbert's interests include: Use of time-series satellite imagery to characterize and monitor land use and land cover, Evaluation of geospatial technologies for mapping and maintaining minefield databases, and Geographic aspects of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity.
Dr Fawcett's mission is to understand and improve how people work together to create conditions for community health and development through collaborative research, teaching, and public service.
Mary Fry oversees the graduate program in sport and exercise psychology. Her research focuses on creating a caring and task-involving climate for youngsters in physical activity settings.
Dr Graham focuses on Genre Studies, including fiction and autobiography; African American literature;Archival Studies; Diaspora and Transnational Criticism and theories; and Digital humanities.
Dr. Hamer's general area of study is the sociological and qualitative study of families, especially those within the United States. Within this broad field, her primary research interests are African American fathers, mothers, and families, especially those that are urban, low-income and working class.
Tanya Hartman has shown her work in a variety of venues and exhibitions all over the country, including the Banana Factory in Bethlehem, Pa.; the Chico Art Center in Chico, Calif.; and the Cinque Gallery and the A.I.R. Gallery in New York.
Nicole Hodges teaches courses on hip-hop, acting, African American theater, race and performance and improvisation theory. Her research interests include African-America drama, performance, and culture, hip-hop, women's and gender studies, solo performance and transnationalism.
Dr. Imber specializes in Educational Law, Policy, Reform, and Administration.
Dr. Jahanbani is an historian of American foreign relations specializing in the post-1945 period. She is especially interested in the legacy of the liberal internationalist tradition in American foreign policy. This includes the history of U.S. relations with the "Third World," the history of the social sciences, (particularly the history of modernization and development), and the emergence of distinctly "global" problems in the post-World War II period.
Accounting and Information Systems
Dr Kennedy teaches undergraduate classes on China’s social and political development, politics of developing countries, and research methods, as well as graduate courses on comparative institutions and conducting fieldwork in developing countries.
Susan King teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in curriculum design, instructional methods, dance, and technology. Her research interests include the recruitment and retention of ethnic minorities, teacher reflection, professionalism, and the connection between physical activity and academic achievement.
Dr. Krishtalka’s research encompassed the evolution of mammals, with paleontological field expeditions throughout western Canada and the U. S., Europe, north and east Africa, China and Patagonia.
Marie-Alice L’Heureux teaches architectural design and a variety of seminars on the city and sustainability. She does research, writing, and teaching on the social and cultural issues that surround the successful implementation of principles of sustainability. She is especially interested in the legacy of infrastructural investment and the impact of unequal development over time. Geographically her work has focused on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as in the major cities of the United States and Canada.
Judith's large figurative oil paintings are distillations of both personal narrative themes and the influences from extensive travel to Mexico and South America. A continuing series of large figurative oils depicts phosphorescent female nudes in prone positions suggesting both sex and death. In these neo-romantic works, Judith takes a traditional subject and re-issues woman as a self-contained entity. Exuding a strong animalistic presence, these women defy appropriation as if frozen in anthropological time.
Specialization: Ancient Mediterranean cultures, languages & religions; ancient Greek & Coptic manuscripts.
Professor Mirecki is an active member of several international scholarly societies, has convened several international academic conferences, and regularly searches European and American museum collections for unstudied ancient manuscripts which he prepares for publication.
Dr Mark Mort studies the evolutionary relationships of the angiosperm family Crassulaceae using DNA sequences from chloroplast and nuclear gene regions
Joane Nagel is a political and cultural sociologist; her work focuses on ethnicities, genders, and sexualities in the US and in the global system, cultural production and construction, social and nationalist movements, American Indian activism, and global climate change. Her current research examines the sociological dimensions of global environmental change, specifically the race, class, gender, and sexual dimensions of climate change.
Dr. Pennington is a specialist on intercultural communication and African-American culture, the cultural discourse on trauma/terror and has taught courses on the Rhetoric of African Americans, the Black Woman, Black Male and Female Communications, among others.
Dr. Peterson's research focuses on aspects of the geography of biodiversity. His formal training was in tropical ornithology, with a particular focus on systematics
Cultural and Social History of 20th Century Latin America; Urban Sociology and Urban History; and Labor and Working-Class History of Latin America.
His interests include: Latin America (Mexico, Central America, Caribbean); history of race (intellectual and social development); African Diaspora in Latin America, indigenous history (ethnohistory of Mesoamerica).
David Smith is a specialist in sociological theory who studies inequality and the psychology of inequality. His writings include publications on classical and critical social theory, anti-Semitism, authority, authoritarianism, charisma, genocide, the Rwandan genocide, capitalism, and labor.
Dr. Tidwell focuses on African American and American literatures.
Dr Timm studies the life history, ecology and conservation biology of mammals of the New World tropics.
Tom Volek spent 15 years in commercial television and then entered academe. He has worked extensively with Russian journalism schools on their emerging market-based media, and the U.S. military on military-media issues.
Professor Warren's research interests include the history of gender and race in African American and Native American education, Kansas, and the United States. Her teaching interests include women's history, citizenship and American identity, race and gender relations, identity development in the African Diaspora, as well as social, civil rights, and reform movements. Warren regularly offers service-learning options in her upper-level women's history course; a link to her electronic course poster in the Center for Teaching Excellence gallery can be seen here.
Jide Wintoki's research interests include empirical corporate finance (especially corporate governance), international finance and applied econometrics.
Ibrahima Ba is a PhD student in Linguistics at KU. He focuses on phonetics, phonology, syntax, and second language acquisition.
Dylan Bassett has been the director of the African Drum Ensemble at KU since it was created in 2007 through the Kansas African Studies Center. Dylan is a composer, percussionist, and teacher. He holds a BA in Music and an MA in Global and International Studies.
Dekow graduated from Grand View University in Iowa with degrees in Human Services and Political Science and a concentration in Public Administration. He earned a Master of Public Policy and Administration from Drake University. He also received his MBA from West Texas A&M University.
Ewnetu Tsegaw received his M.A. in Communication from Idaho State University in 2014. Before that, he completed his M.A. in Peace and Security Studies at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Ethiopia.
