FROM THE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the website of New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora – CSAAD! Founded in 2018, CSAAD provides opportunities for research and scholarship concerning both Africa and its Diaspora. We do this through a range of opportunities that includes a monthly Africa~Diaspora Forum; an Artist-in-Residence Program and Distinguished Speakers Series; an annual Postdoctoral Fellowship; the Africa~Diaspora Institute for Social Studies Teachers; seminal conferences; book launches; films and documentaries; and a faculty brown bag series. We are also inaugurating two new series, African Worlds in Conversation and Diasporic Africa in Dialogue, which during the 2020-21 academic year will be presented virtually.

We begin the fall 2020 semester in the midst of a global pandemic, as well as social and political upheaval, centered in and revolving around challenges faced by Africans and their descendants around the world, including the United States. These challenges include poverty, health disparities, criminal injustice, failing governance, unacceptable educational opportunities, food insecurity, and climate change that disproportionately impacts black and brown communities. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement has been a global response.

CSAAD supports the struggles of African people everywhere, and to that end we dedicate our efforts.

All are welcome here!

Michael A. Gomez

Director 

Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies

NYU