Sarah Van Beurden joined the department in 2009. She is also affiliated with the departments of History and Art History. A Belgian national, she obtained her Ph.D. in History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Van Beurden has been the recipient of, among others, the Annenberg fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, a Rockefeller research grant, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Studies University of Texas in Austin. She teaches African history, African art history and transnational cultural history. Her research and publications focus on colonial and postcolonial cultural politics, the history of the Congo and transnational cultural history.  She is currently completing Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture, a book that explores the role of arts and cultural politics in the Congo from the late colonial until the postcolonial era.