Since the Institute’s reopening in July 2007, we have been busy putting the pieces back together again, and have made substantial progress in our recruitment of administrative staff and remobilization of scholars and students of Africa on campus. We have now established a number of on-going or annual seminars, events and workshops, including the WEAI-IAS Africa-Asia Series on Governance, the Graduate Committee on African Studies (GCAS) Africa Workshop and the New York African Film Festival (this year with an expert panel on the ANC and South Africa’s new democracy as witnessed through film). As a result of our efforts over the past two years, teaching and research related to African studies have been greatly enhanced. The campus-wide course offerings on Africa have been restored and expanded. The Certificate in African Studies and the African Studies Major have been re-established, and we are continuing to build bridges and create new opportunities for collaboration and dialogue between the diverse research and teaching units and schools working on Africa at Columbia University. Funding programs, such as the Leitner Family Student Fellowship to facilitate research and training in African studies for graduate and undergraduate students, were launched this year, and received a large number of impressive applications from students. With this first phase in our development behind us, and with the support of our administrative team, which includes Assistant Director Sarah Walsworth, Administrative Assistant Lisa Kim and has included Program Assistants Ginger Baker and Kawai Washburn (2007 – 2008) and Stacey Wood and Sachin Gathani (2008 – 2009), we are now ready to embark on a new phase in our effort to make IAS a leading center for teaching and research on African academic, cultural and policy affairs.

As some of you may already know, we are currently in the process of re-locating and re-structuring the IAS, as well as the African studies and African language programs within the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. Our institutional move from SIPA to the School of Arts and Sciences in July 2009, and our physical move from the International Affairs Building to Knox Hall mark the beginning of a new chapter in the history and “future history” of the IAS and of African studies. This transition presents exciting challenges and new opportunities to re-imagine African studies at Columbia University and beyond. With this in mind, I invite colleagues, students and all people interested in African studies to contribute to what we hope will be a lively and constructive conversation on the future of African studies to be featured in future installments of our newsletter and on our website. Some of the issues with which we seek your engagement include: the location of Africa within our teaching and research, as well as our structuring and conceptualization of African studies programs within the university; the amount of attention and emphasis that we ought to place on different parts of the continent and their connections with each other and the wider world; the possibilities for and implications of the reformulation of academic geographies and frameworks (e.g., Indian ocean, Atlantic world and global studies approaches) within African Studies; the physical location of African studies programs within the university and their relation to the program vision as reflected in the curriculum and faculty research; and the impact that our conceptualization of Africa might have on future generations of scholars, students and policy makers working on Africa.

The IAS is on the path to regaining its position and reputation as a pioneering center for the study of the African continent. Its relocation within the Office of the Vice President for Arts and Sciences opens up new possibilities of campus-wide collaboration and a more intense intervention in the social sciences and humanities. Please join us in this exciting endeavor of re-imagining African studies at Columbia University and beyond.

Mamadou Diouf