People
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Elizabeth MacGonagleDirector, Kansas African Studies Center
Associate Professor, History/African and African American Studies
Dr. Liz MacGonagle is an African historian in the Departments of History and African & African American Studies. She learned Kiswahili when studying in Kenya and as undergraduate, and she now speaks Portuguese and Ndau, a dialect of Shona. 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. Dr. MacGonagle is currently engaged in analyzing intersections between history and memory at several African sites of memory central to the heritage of slavery. |
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Peter OjiamboAssociate Professor, African and African American Studies Dr. Peter Ojiambo is an Associate Professor of African & African-American Studies. His area of teaching expertise 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 before coming to KU. His research focuses on African education, especially studies of the Starehe Boys Center and School of Kenya. He has published in this area and on education, democracy, and development.
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Shawn Leigh AlexanderChair of the African and African-American Studies Department Dr.Shawn Alexander is a Professor and Chair of the African and African-American Studies department, in addition, he is the Director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas. His areas of research concentration is African American social and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th Centuries. |
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Doreen SiiloAssistant Director, Kansas African Studies Center Doreen holds an MA in African Studies from the Ohio University, Athens. She is also the Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) coordinator for KASC. Her duties include overseeing all aspects of the administration of the FLAS program, assisting with center events and initiatives, conducting and supporting K-16, university, community outreach activities, and assisting with coordination of grant activities. |
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Brenda Wawire Assistant Teaching Professor, Coordinator African Languages Program Dr. Wawire is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Kiswahili and African and African-American Studies and serves as the African languages program coordinator for the African and African-American Studies Department. Dr. Wawire has over a decade of experience in foreign and second language education. At KU, she is involved in efforts to strengthen African, diasporic languages through coordinating instruction, facilitating reverse-engineered curriculum (i.e. designed to teach outcomes) and task-based language learning. |
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Amal El HaimeurAssistant Teaching Professor, Coordinator Arabic Language Program Dr. El Haimeur is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Arabic and African and African-American Studies and serves as the Arabic language program Coordinator, for the African and African-American Studies Department. She has extensive experience in foreign and second language instruction. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and specializes in Arabic as a heritage language, second language acquisition, and teaching Arabic as a foreign language. |