Welcome to the Abstracts and Bios section!

Click on the letter range to the right to find the Abstract or Panelist you desire.

John Ringquist is an International History instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  He is also a PhD student at the University of Kansas, where his research includes work on climate, famine and disease, governance, and African military and environmental history.  His latest article is "Kongo Iron" which was published in the African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter in September 2008.  He is also actively researching the use of Gabon rats as mine detecting animals in East Africa.  John Ringquist holds a MPPA from the University of Missouri and MA in History from the University of Kansas.

Tanya le Roux (M. Com. Communication Management) is a lecturer at the School of Communication Studies at the North West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. She has corporate communication experience in various industries and continues with consultation work where possible. Her research interests are focused on corporate communication management in South Africa and specifically the influences on the function in contributing to organizational performance. She has presented papers at leading national and international conferences and now focuses on completing her PhD.

Muey Saeteurn is a doctoral candidate in History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include African history, Gender and Colonialism, Modern Middle East, and World history. She graduated from San Jose State University with a B.A. in History. Currently, she is developing a dissertation project that examines the ways in which ordinary Luhya farmers—particularly farm women—from western Kenya exploited, adapted, or rejected development projects sponsored by the Quaker Friends African Mission, the colonial state and national government during the independence era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Jonathan Shaw is studying Comparative History at the College of William & Mary, focusing on a comparison of Mobutu Sese Seko and Julius Nyerere in the 1965-1979 time period. Jonathan was born and raised in Kenya, and hopes to live and teach in the Congo (DRC) in the future after pursuing PhD studies, during which time he hopes to study the Kivu region of the Congo.

Shonubi, O.K. is currently a full time PhD student in the Department of Education Management, Law and Policy Studies, University of Pretoria. He is however still a lecturer in the Department of Educational Management, Lagos State University, Nigeria. He has published in recognised journals and has attended scholarly conferences locally and internationally.  He is also happily married with two children.

Esther Some-Guiebre is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign where she works on a PhD in education.  She holds an MA in African studies and a Master certificate in gender and international development. Her research interest involves multicultural education, teacher education, and English language learners particularly the children of French speaking immigrants in the U.S.

Andréa de Souza Lobo received her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Brasília. She has done research on family organization in a context of female emigration in Cape Verde society. She has been Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Brasília, since 2009. Her current research interests include the continuous flow of resources, values and goods that characterizes Cape Verde society and its connections of local forms of sociality – family organization, household configurations, gender relations, and parenthood".

Kehinde A. Taiwo is currently Reader in Food Process Engineering in the Faculty of Technology at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where she earned all her degrees. She graduated at the top of her class for the BS degree in Food Science in 1985. Midway through that degree, she decided to not let go of her dream of becoming an engineer and so, against all odds, she took additional courses that enabled her to get within a few credits of completing another BS degree in Agricultural Engineering. Subsequently, she enrolled in graduate studies in Agricultural Engineering, completing the requirements for the BS, the MS and the PhD degrees. Since joining the teaching and research faculty of her alma mater, she has taught courses in Agricultural Engineering, Technology Planning, Food Technology and Food Process Engineering. She is active in the Women and Gender program at Ife, and also in the engineering professional community, serving first as Vice Chairman, and then as Chairman of the Ile-Ife Branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers. A Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Dr. Taiwo served until recently on the Governing Council of the NSE. She has won several awards, and has participated in several international leadership programs with organizations such as IWL, DAAD, FAO, WFEO, etc. In her university as well as in the Nigerian engineering community, Dr. Taiwo has continued to serve as a role model for young women who aspire to pursue engineering as a career.

Bridget A. Teboh, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of African History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. She holds an M.A. in African Area Studies and a Ph.D. in African History from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Cameroon, Yaounde, a DUEF (Diplome d’Universite d’Etudes Francais) from Universite Jean-Moulin, Lyon III, France. She specializes in African History, African-American Women’s History, Women’s and Gender studies, and oral history. Her research interests are colonialism, post-coloniality, historical biography, women’s ikah [power], and historical ethnography, and women’s history. In 1996 and 1998, Dr. Teboh served as a Ford Foundation and ISOP (International Studies and Overseas Program) Scholar-in-Residence and Research Affiliate of the University of Cameroon, Yaounde. She has contributed scholarly articles and book chapters on African history and culture, historical methods, African feminism, and economic development, the latest titled, “Historicizing ‘The Moghamo-Bali ibit /Conflict: German Encounters with ‘Rebellious Vassals,’” in Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku (editors) Wars and Peace in Africa: History, Nationalism and the State, (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010) ; and also, “Dialoguing Women: Challenges of Being African and Conducting Research on African Women and Gender,” with Nwando Achebe in Africa After Gender?: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Editors), S. Meischer, Takyiwa Manu and C. Cole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); “West African Women: Some Considerations” in UFAHAMU, Journal of African Activist Association, XXII, 3 (1994);and, “Locating Women in Early 20 th Century Moghamo History,” in Emergent Themes and Methods in African Studies: Essays in Honor of Adiele E. Afigbo eds. Toyin Falola and Adam Paddock (Africa World Press: Trenton, New Jersey, 2009). Dr. Teboh presently is working on two book projects, “Unruly Mothers, Combative Wives: Rituals, Women and Change in the Cameroon Grassfields c. 1889-1960,” a study of British and German colonialism in West Cameroon in the late19th and early 20th Centuries; and Herstory: The Life and Times of “Madame Maternity,” a political figure and health worker.

Katrina Daly Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at UCLA, where she teaches both Swahili and critical applied linguistics.  She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her research concerns the relationship between language, power, and identity in African verbal arts, with a focus on popular cultures in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Emma Osonna Ugwulebo hails from Owerri, Imo State of Nigeria. He holds  B.Sc.(Hons.), M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in Sociology, specializing in International Analysis. Dr. Ugwulebo is a lecturer with the Imo State University, Owerri, where he teaches Sociology. Dr. Ugwulebo has published extensively in learned Journals and has several books to his credit.

Iniobong I. Uko is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English, and the current Director of General Studies, University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria. Her major area of research is African women’s writing, specifically, a cross-cultural study of African and Diasporic women’s writings. She has published extensively in journals and books in Nigeria, Ghana, the United States of America and Germany. She is the author of the seminal book Gender and Identity in the Works of Osonye Tess Onwueme.

Florence Wakoko is an Associate Professor of sociology and Director, Certificate in African Studies at Columbus State University. She is a recipient of the USDE-consortia grant which supported the development of an online system-wide Certificate in African Studies. She is a member of the Rural Sociological Society, Association of Third World Studies, and American Association of University Women. She has expertise in the areas of Rural Sociology, and Women and Gender Studies. She is actively involved in community outreach programs some of which include serving as a gender consultant to the UN Anglican Observer’s Office, and engaging students in community-based service learning projects in Clinical Sociology. In 2001, Dr. Wakoko mentored a team of faculty to a Faculty Summer Seminar in Ghana. She also participated in the starting of the Southeast Model African Union (SEMAU), and has organized SEMAU annual conferences to engage students in sharing research and possible solutions to the social, economic and security issues that confront the people of Africa. Wakoko teaches some web-based courses, and has conducted research on Women Farmers and Microfinance Use in Uganda. She is mentoring students in doing research on culture and women’s grassroots organizations in Africa, an inter-disciplinary project that will be implemented through a Study Abroad program in Uganda in May 2010.

Mary Nyangweso Wangila is the J. Woolard and Helen Peel distinguished professor in Religious Studies at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. She is at East Carolina University where she teaches courses in Women and Religion, Classical Islam, Religions of Africa and Introduction to Religious Studies. She received her B.Ed at Kenyatta University (Nairobi Kenya), her M.Phil Moi University (Eldoret, Kenya), her ThM at Candler School of Theology, Emory University (Atlanta Georgia) her M. Phil and PhD at Drew University in the Sociology of religion. She is the author of Female Circumcision: the Interplay between Religion, Gender and Culture in Kenya (2007) Wangila has also published other essays related to religion and the rights of African women, specifically in the area of HIV/AIDS, politics and circumcision communities. Her research examines the influence of religion in the social process, with respect to women’s human rights and social justice. This research is informed by social and ethical theory and is grounded in ethnography as a method of survey. Her current line of inquiry entitled “Female Circumcision in America: Religious Implications” analyzes the influence of indigenous and other religious values upon immigrants in the United States

Jessica Wilbanks is a second-year M.F.A. student in fiction at the University of Houston and Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast.  She received her undergraduate degree from Hampshire College, where she studied creative writing and theology.  Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gulf Coast, The Puritan, Sojourners, and Relevant Magazine.

Jonathan Zilberg is a cultural anthropologist specializing in museumanthropology, religion and art in Africa and Asia. In addition, he hasresearch interests in the fields of mass media, gender and violenceagainst women, Islam and civil society. His most recent research includes work on rape as a weapon of war in the eastern DRC and on the controversy over the use of reconstruction and rehabilitation funds for building the tsunami museum in Banda Aceh , Indonesia. He is an active reviewer for the on-line arts and sciences journal Leonardo, a contributing researcher in the Department of Transtechnology at the University of Plymouth and an Affiliate Research Scholar with the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign where he earned his doctorate in 1996.

Celumusa Delisile Zungu holds Master of Laws Degree from the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa. She is a Magistrate and also a Presiding Officer in Pietermaritzburg Equality Court, Kwa Zulu Natal province, South Africa. Prior to her appointment as a Magistrate she was a practicing attorney, having practiced from 1997 up to 2003. She is a Vice Chairperson of Black Lawyers Association, Pietermaritzburg branch.

Katja Zvan-Elliott : I am a third year DPhil/PhD student at the University of Oxford. I am currently living in Morocco in a village in high Atlas region, researching people's perceptions and opinions of changing gender relations and the impact of the recently reformed Family Code on the society and local customs.

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Africa Conference 2010: Women, Genders, and Sexuality in Africa

Convened by Dr. Toyin Falola and Coordinated by Saheed Aderinto for the Center for African and African American Studies

Webmaster: Adam Paddock