People

​​Elizabeth MacGonagle

macgonag@ku.edu

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.

Peter Ojiambo

ojiambo@ku.edu

Associate Professor, African and African American Studies
Kiswahili Language Instructor

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.

Shawn Leigh Alexander

shawnalexander@ku.edu

Chair 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.

Doreen Siilo

dsiilo@ku.edu

Assistant 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.

Amal El Haimeur

amalelhaimeur@ku.edu

Assistant Teaching Professor, Coordinator Language Program

Dr. El Haimeur is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Arabic and African and African-American Studies and serves as the 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.