Scott Straus

Scott Straus is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at UW-Madison. Scott teaches classes on genocide, violence, human rights, and African politics. His book on the Rwandan genocide, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda(Cornell University Press, 2006), won the 2006 Award for Excellence in Political Science and Government from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers as well as an honorable mention from the African Studies Association for the Herskovits Prize. A second book on Rwanda, Intimate Enemy (Zone Books, 2006), includes transcripts of interviews Scott conducted with jailed Rwandan perpetrators and photographs taken by Robert Lyons. Scott also co-authored Africa's Stalled Development (Lynne Rienner), translated The Great Lakes of Africa (Zone Books), and has published in Foreign Affairs, World Politics, Politics & Society, Journal of Genocide Research, and Genocide Studies and Prevention. Scott has received fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Rsearch Council, and the United States Institute for Peace. In 2009, Scott was awarded the William H. Kiekhofer Distinguished Teaching Award. Before starting in academia, Scott was a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Scott is the Faculty Coordinator of the Wisconsin Human Rights Initiative. For more information, see http://humanrights.wisc.edu/

Current CV (PDF).

Aili Mari Tripp

Aili Mari Tripp is Professor of Political Science and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also director of the Women's Studies Research Center. She is completing a book entitled, Gender, Power and Peacemaking in Africa and has co-authored with Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa a book entitled African Women’s Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes (2009). She is also author of Museveni's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power  (2010), Women and Politics in Uganda (2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (1997). Tripp is vice president and president-elect of the African Studies Association.

Aliko Songolo

Aliko Songolo is Halverson-Bascom Professor of French and Professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching interests lie primarily in Francophone literatures of Africa and the Caribbean, and Francophone cinemas of Africa and Québec. He has published a monograph (Aimé Césaire: une poétique de la découverte, 1985), two co-edited volumes (Twenty-five Years After Dakar and Fourah Bay: The Growth of African Literature, 1998) and Atlantic Cross-Currents/ Transatlantiques, 2001), and was Associate Editor of the highly acclaimed five-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008). He also edited special issues of two eminent journals in his field, French Review (1982) and Présence Francophone (2003), and published numerous articles. His current research projects investigate the question of national cinema in Québec and Francophone Africa, and postcoloniality in the wake of the Négritude movement.  He was recently named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight in the Order of Academic Palms) by the French Ministry of National Education.

He has served as Chair of the Department of French & Italian, as Director of the African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and as Associate Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of California-Irvine before he moved to Wisconsin. He is currently co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies and Senior Adviser to the Vice-Provost for Globalization. He has also served the profession at large in many capacities. He was twice President of the African Literature Association. He chaired the Modern Language Association’s African Literature Division (2002), and its Division of Francophone Literatures and Cultures (2009). He recently completed a term as President of the African Studies Association while serving on its Board of Directors for three years.

Tejumola Olaniyan

Tejumola Olaniyan, IRH Senior Fellow, is the Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and African Languages at the University Wisconsin-Madison. He is founding chair of the African Diaspora and the Atlantic World Research Circle (2003-2010), and currently co-chairs the Music, Race, and Empire Research Circle. His research interests include African, African diaspora, and postcolonial literature and cultural studies. He has published widely in these areas, including Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics (2004, 2009; nominated for Best Research in World Music by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in 2005), Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African American and Caribbean Drama (1995), and co-editor of African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (2007, with Ato Quayson), African Drama and Performance (2004, with John Conteh-Morgan), and African Diaspora and the Disciplines (2010, with James H. Sweet). One of his current projects is a book, Political Cartooning in Africa, forthcoming from Indiana University Press, and an online encyclopedia of African political cartoonists.