Skip to main content

About Afrisem

The Africa Seminar (AfriSem) provides an interdisciplinary and area-defined setting for graduate students studying Africa to develop, present, and draw advice on papers and research proposals.

It is open to graduate students (and advanced undergraduates by permission) from any discipline, department, or school of Northwestern, at whatever stage of completion of their graduate program. Graduate students are encouraged to participate in AfriSem throughout their graduate years. Student who regularly attend Afrisem are eligible to receive course credit and research funding from the Program of African Studies.

AFRISEM FALL 2026 PLAN

Meeting every other Thursday from September 24 (the week classes resume) through November 19, 2026.

Sessions

September 24: Open House in Collaboration with PAS

This should be an open house event where, as usual, the faculty and graduate students meet to reconnect after the summer break. It is also an opportunity to meet new graduate students. As this is an unusual Fall for PAS, the Interim Director, Will Reno, should open it by addressing the gathering on the recent tumult in PAS, explaining what the current situation is and hinting what the future holds.

October 8: What Future for African Studies?

For this session, we will invite two or three faculty to have a conversation about the question, what does it mean to become an Africanist now? The guest speakers could reflect on the changing institutional position of African Studies, shrinking or shifting funding, the place of area studies in universities, and what graduate students should anticipate. Then pivot toward students’ futures: What careers does expertise on Africa prepare us for beyond the academy? How should graduate students make their expertise legible outside their disciplines? What skills should we acquire alongside our degrees? Where might African Studies be headed over the next decade?

People we may invite: Antawan Byrd (Dept of Art History), Christopher Udry (Dept of Economics); Adia Benton (Dept of Anthropology); Paul Naylor (PAS Alumni).

October 22: Africa on Screen: Film, Food and Conversation

This is one of the deliberately light gatherings. We will choose one African film (ideally something that generates questions relevant across disciplines) and watch it together, followed by an informal discussion. This maintains the lighter, social dimension of Afrisem rather than making every meeting feel like additional academic labor.

Film suggestions: Mati Diopʼs film, Dahomey; Soundtrack to a Coup dʼEtat; or Rugano Nyoniʼs film, I Am Not A Witch.

November 5: Africa in the Lab: STEM Research and the Continent

For this session, we will invite an African professor and one or two graduate students from engineering, medicine, public health, computer science, environmental science, data science, energy and so on. We will give each person perhaps 20 minutes to answer one question: What does your work have to do with Africa? The connection can be direct or unexpected. Someone studying batteries might discuss African mineral supply chains; a medical researcher, disease burdens or clinical infrastructure; an AI researcher, African languages or data representation; an environmental scientist, climate adaptation; an engineer, infrastructure or energy. Then we will have a broader conversation around the following question: Why has “African Studies” traditionally been dominated by the humanities and social sciences, and what would an African Studies community genuinely spanning STEM, humanities and social sciences look like?

People we may invite: Prof. Sarki Abba Abdulkadir (Dept of Urology, Feinberg School of Medicine); Tochukwu Dominic Eze (Dept of Computer Science); Wisdom Akpan (Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering).

November 19: Grants and Fellowship Application

To close the quarter, we will invite Stephen Hill from the Office of Fellowships to talk to us about grants and fellowship applications. This is a usual event and will be useful to new members of the community in identifying internal grants for predissertation work. It will also help advanced students identify and apply for external fellowships.