Dear Africanist Colleagues and Friends, 

The staff at the Center for African Studies is thrilled to welcome you back to campus. We are looking forward to an active 2023/24 academic year, with lots of productive academic and outreach and engagement academic activities. But first, some good news: we finalized our Strategic Plan for the next three years. We thank Dr. Fernando Unzueta, Associate Vice Provost, Office of International Affairs, for encouraging and guiding us through this process. We have posted it to our website, and we encourage everyone to look at it and share insights. As a result of this comprehensive Strategic Plan, we have been approved to hire a new assistant director to replace Laura Joseph, who will be leaving us at the end of September. We extend our immense gratitude to Laura for her two decades of dedicated service to the Center. We thank the OIA leadership for recognizing the Center’s relevance to the academic and cultural lives of OSU students and faculty. 
 
Updating Faculty and Graduate Students’ Bios on CAS Website 
Over the summer, Laura worked to refresh our website and update information, especially the bios of CAS faculty and graduate students. It’s a work in progress and we hope to have all the information updated by the end of the fall semester. We therefore count on you to send us your current bio and to inform us about new Africanist colleagues, to be added to the list. We also urge you to encourage your graduate students to reach out to us so that we can include them in the graduate students’ listserv. 
 
Mark Your Calendar 
We are planning to begin the year with two of our flagship events highlighted in the Strategic Plan: 
The Forum for Public Conversation on Hot News from Africa is intended to provide a space for OSU community as well as Africans in the city of Columbus to discuss current “hot events” on the continent to sharpen the general public’s understanding of such important events. The topic for the first event is the Sahel Crises broadly defined to include the virtual civil war in Sudan, and the coup in Niger that verges on a West African regional military crisis. This event is scheduled for Wednesday, September 27 from 12-1:30. Details will be provided in a separate announcement. 

The Africa at Noon, is a monthly or bi-monthly presentation of work in progress, to enable faculty and graduate students to share their research with colleagues and to receive feedback. We particularly encourage graduate students to use this forum to present conference papers, chapters of their dissertations, draft articles for publication, etc. Our first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 25 from 12-1:30. The meeting rooms for these events will be announced in separate emails. 
 
Other Events Co-Sponsored by CAS 
*Ugandan History Lecture by Yusra Abdullahi and Jonathan Earl at the Mershon on Wednesday September 20th at 12noon.
Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper talk at Mershon on their new book, Post-Imperial Possibilities, on Thursday, 9/21, 3:45-5:15pm. 
*Sarah van Beurden’s exhibition from the Congo opens on Sept. 21st (details to follow). 
 
Once again, welcome to the new academic year. We encourage you to bring your events to our attention so that we can publish them, participate, and even co-sponsor them as logistics and other consideration permit. 
 
Sincerely, 
  
Dr. Ousman Murzik Kobo
Associate Professor of History 
Director, Center for African Studies
The Ohio State University
College of Arts and Sciences
Department of History
157 Dulles Hall
230 Annie and John Glenn Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210
614-247-2719 Office
kobo.1@osu.edu 
Pronouns: he/him/his.