These are photos I have taken at various times and places of some well known scholars in African studies.  Of course their appearance on this page in no way implies their endorsement of anything I say.  Or vice versa, come to think of it.
 

Muhammadu Sani Ibrahim is a specialist on the traditional, Arabic based, "Ajami" script of Hausa. He teaches in the Department of Nigerian Languages at Bayero University, Kano.

UCHIDA Akane is a young Japanese graduate student interested in medieval west Africa. Look for more from her in the future. (Japanese surnames will be capitalized on this page, just so you know which name is which.)

Emmanuel Akyeampong teaches African history at Harvard. His most recent book is on the history of alcohol in Ghana.

Edward A. "Ned" Alpers teaches modern east African history at UCLA. I had him for a lot of classes, and count him a person friend as well as an instructor.

Kabiru Suleiman Chafe is a former Nigerian cabinet minister. He's a nice guy, too, so a natural politician. He doesn't need the money, but he likes history so much he still teaches it at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. I met him at an Islamic studies conference in Japan, and we are still good friends.

Mamadou Cisse is another specialist on precolonial, Arabic-script documents, in his case Wolof documents from Senegal. I met him at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka where he was also an invited guest researcher.

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (right) teaches at the University of Paris VII, and is probably the greatest historian of Africa living in France today. I met her at a US African Studies Association meeting in San Francisco, where she talked about the struggle of foreign nationals teaching at French universities. I invited her to visit the Japan Association for African Studies meeting in Kyoto a few years later. Here she is with [some members of the women's caucus]. Here she is furiously exchanging business cards, Japanese-style. Here she is at a conference in Austin, Texas, with another scholar, whose name I unfortunately have lost.

Christian Jennings is a young graduate student who organized the conference. Watch out for him. If he continues in African history he will be someone with influence.

Christopher Ehret specializes in linguistic history and precolonial eastern and southern Africa. He has a phenomenal memory, and was a member of my Ph.D. committee at UCLA.

The University of Florida African Studies Center has a relationship with the Kyoto University African Studies Center and has sent out a series of visitors. Abe Goldman was at the same meeting that Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch attended. He's also done work on Northern Nigeria, specifically agriculture.

Professor Kazunobu IKEYA is an eccological anthropologist who works at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku). He was a big help to me settling in. As you can guess from the picture, he's usually very busy with his own work.

Professor Koji KITAMURA is another anthropologist who worked at Hirosaki University. We were all sorry to see him go.

Jiro TANAKA was, until recently, the head of the Kyoto University's African Studies Center. He's an ecological anthropologist.

Luise White teaches African history at the University of Florida. She came to Kyoto on exchange, and we were able to talk Kyoto into sending her to Hirosaki and her into coming. She gave a very nice talk, and we hope to have her back sometime.

Mel Page is sometime editor of H-Africa. I snapped this at the H-Net editors' meeting at the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago.

Professor Teiko MISHIMA works at Minpaku. She specializes in the study of Francophone West Africa.

MORI Jun retired a few years ago, but is still Japan's leading specialist on African ceramics.

Professor Georges Nzongola-Ntolaja should need no introduction to specialists in African studies, but just in case you're not one, he's a Congolese (formerly Zairois) specialist in African politics now working as a Senior Technical Adviser for the UNDP in Abuja, Nigeria. We met at the council guest house at the University of Jos, where both of us were staying. Professor Nzongola-Ntolaja's lecture on democratization in Africa was well attended and generated some interesting discussion. His wife, Margaret C. Lee, (also in the photo) is American, and teaches at Georgetown University. She's been working on southern African economies recently.

Hassan Moturba Pullo works in Nigeria's Nomadic Education project. He's a great help to anyone interested in the Fulani, and their language Fulfulde.

Professor Monday Mangvwat is a historian and the acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos. His tenure has been very successful. There is a new American Studies Program, and plans to develop other area studies programs.

Musa Gaiya is the acting Head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Jos. He's a specialist on African church history and new religious movements.

Sati Fwatshak is a historian at the University of Jos. During the 2000-2001 school year he's been on a Fulbright to New York University.

Ibrahim El-Zakzaky is head of the Ikhwan Muslims in Nigeria. He's one of the most controversial preachers in Nigeria, and one of the most net connected.

KURIMOTO Eisei works on Ethiopia, but recently has been doing research and organizing projects related to conflict in Africa. Here he is with Kwesi Prah, founding director of the Centre for Advanced Study of African Societies, at a Minpaku conference on "Rewriting Africa: Toward Renaissance or Collapse?"

Liisa H. Malkki came to the same conference. She's an anthropologist from Finland but lives in California. Her recent research has focussed on the memory of social violence among refugees from Rwanda and Burundi. This is her with Kwesi Prah and Francis Deng of the Brookings Institution.

David Henige is one of the world's leading specialists on oral history. He works as the Africana Bibliographer at the University of Wisconsin, one of the major African studies schools in the U. S., and in his spare time works on his publications, not all of which have to do with Africa. Here's a close-up.

Joe Holloway has been a special friend since we knew each other in grad school at UCLA. I stayed with him when I last went to southern California, and he had me talk to all his classes at Cal State Northridge, in the Pan-African Studies department. He still outdoes me in publications, but I'm trying to catch up. It won't be easy. Here's a shot of him with Merrick Posnansky. Joe's never done archaeology, but Merrick has developed an interest in the African diaspora, so they had quite a bit to talk about.

Jamie Monson was someone else I knew in grad school. I caught up with her at the same conference in Texas where I met Christian Jennings and saw Catherine C-V again.

Russ Schuh (a.k.a. Malam Takalmi) was my Hausa professor at UCLA. It might sound like bragging if I said he was one of the most important Hausa language specialists in the world, but if you don't believe it you can go to the UCLA Hausa pages, which he maintains.

Professor Toru SOGA is an ecological anthropologist here at Hirosaki University. If you ever want to exchange camels with a Gabra, he's your man.

Professor Yuko (SUGIYAMA) YASU also works here at Hirosaki University and does studies on the anthropology of agriculture in Zambia. This is her with her son at the African studies meeting in Kyoto.

Here's a picture of Shinsuke SAKUMICHI, our Africanist psychologist at Hirosaki University. This is him at the party for Luise White. Here's me at the same party. Here's Professor White. Here she is with Dean Tanno. Just so you won't think all we do at Japanese universities is party, here's a shot of the talk she gave before the party.

When I can I'll be adding more photos here, of Africanists from around the world, and especially Japan. Maybe I'll organize these pages, too. But don't count on it. In the meantime I have to apologize for and to all the people whose photos didn't come out, and who for that reason or otherwise aren't represented here. I will get more photos up, hopefully before too long.

Keep coming back.