2021-2022 Editorial Board

Editors-in-Chief:

Cristi Whiskey: Ph.D. Candidate in History at UCLA. Current research: Anti-Blackness, Islam, and Enslavement in medieval West Africa.

Amed Galo Lopez: Ph.D. Student in History at UCLA. Current research: Postcolonialism, Transnationalism, Carcerality, Autocracy, Gender and State, and the Prison-Industrial-Complex in modern Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

Treasurer:

Secretary:

Lauren Neumann: M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program. Current research: Gender-based violence, Femicides, Global Health, and Urban Economies in modern Kenya. Also Book Review Editor for Ufahamu.

Social Media Manager:

Esther Appiah: M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program. Current research: Tackling global inequalities, fostering resource access, and improving community education in underserved regions. Also Arts Editor for Ufahamu.

Editors:

Marcus Amico: M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program.

Adam Benjamin: M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program.

Amy Crum: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of Art History (M.A., Art History, Tulane University, 2019; B.A., Art History, UCLA, 2012).

Clarissa Damesyn: M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program; B.A. Student, UCLA International Development Studies; Minors in GIS&T and Geography/Environmental Studies; Departmental Scholar.

Britton Gustafson: Ph.D. Student, UCLA History. Current research: Medicine and Historical Epidemiology in East Africa.

Sara Hussein: Ph.D Student UCLA Department of History (MA, Middle East Studies, The American University in Cairo; BA, Political Science, University of Tennessee); Research interests: Modern Egyptian history, Pan-Africanism, Afro-Arab Anti-colonial Solidarities, Nasserism.

Samuel Lamontagne: Ph.D Candidate, UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology (M.A. Anthropology, EHESS-Paris, 2015). Current research: Music across the African diaspora. Dissertation on Los Angeles hip-hop and electronic music scenes.

Chris Martinez: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of History (A.B. American Studies, Brown University, 2018). Current research: Pan-Africanism, Anti-colonialism, Nkrumahism-Touréism, Guinea, Islam and Sufism in West Africa.

Cameron Mouton: B.A, UCLA, American Literature and Culture, 2022; Current research: Literary editing, Storytelling, and Cultural analysis. With experience in editorial production and media coordination in film, television, and digital platforms. Also Books Review Editor for Ufahamu.

Haider Shahbaz: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Comparative Literature. Current research: Modernism/modernity, Marxism, Internationalism and cosmopolitanism, Los Angeles Review of Books, and South Asian, African and Diasporic Literatures.

Dexter Story: Ph.D., UCLA Ethnomusicology. He is a musician, composer, ethnomusicologist, and Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA. His scholarship explores musical innovation in the Horn of Africa, focusing on how indigenous practices and modern technologies intersect as forms of postcolonial reclamation — sustaining communities and freedom movements. His manuscript in progress, Guayla Nation, expands on his dissertation on Tigrinya guayla music, investigating the convergence of sound, dance, and identity in Eritrea and across the Afro-diaspora.

Arts Editors:

Ava Katarina Tabatabai Hess: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of Art History (M. Sc.Visual, Material & Museum Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2014; B.A. Middle Eastern, South Asian, & African Studies, Columbia University, 2012). Current research: South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), narrative Islamic art, histories of trans-Saharan connectivity, decolonial theory, critical museum studies. 

Sunny Chen: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of History (B.A. History, Columbia University 2020). Research interests: Arab intellectual history, French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, global migration, environmental history, cultural heritage preservation.

Book Review Editors:

Lucas Avidan: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology (M.A. Ethnomusicology, UCLA, 2019; B.A. Music and English, Middlebury College, 2015). Current research: popular music in Tanzania, social media, music as archive.

Jewell Humphrey: Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA Anthropology (B.A. Africana Studies, Howard University 2020). Current research: Africana archaeology, maritime archaeology and heritage, Caribbean maritime history, and Black digital humanities and archival practice. Her research, “The Search for the Black Star Line,” emphasizes the importance of heritage preservation in a Pan-African context. Also Books Review Editor for Ufahamu.

Cameron Mouton: B.A, UCLA, American Literature and Culture, 2022; Current scholarly interests: Afrofuturism and Black Media Studies. 

Issues Editor:

Thyra Cobbs, M.A. Student, UCLA African Studies Program. Current research: Pan-African Black Psychology, Black Historical Traumatology, and Black Reparations advocacy within Mental Healthcare and Higher Education.

Broderick Dunlap, M.A. Student, UCLA Department of African American Studies, current research: reparations, intellectual histories of radical black grassroots movements.

Previous Editors-in-Chief:

Brisa Smith Flores: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (Masters of Liberal Arts, Cert. Cultural Heritage Management, University of Pennsylvania, 2018; B.A., Art History, History, and Global and International Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, 2016). Current research: Decolonial/Postcolonial Theory, African Diaspora Studies, Latin American Studies, Museum Studies.

Desmond Fonseca: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of History. (B.A. History and Africana Studies, Tufts University, 2020); Current research: Anti-colonialism, Lusophone Africa, Political Legacies of Amilcar Cabral, Pan-Africanism, Black Radical Traditions, Afrocentrism.

Talia Lieber: Ph.D. Student, UCLA Department of Art History (M.A. Art History, UCLA, 2019; B.A., Art History and International Relations, Tufts University, 2013). Current research: historic and contemporary Rwandan art, arts of eastern Africa, museum studies.

Rebecca Wolff: Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA Department of Art History (M.A., Art History, Columbia University, 2014; B.A., English Honors and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, 2011). Current research: modern and contemporary African art, art and armed conflict.

Janice Levi: Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA Department of History (M.A., African Studies, Indiana University, 2011; B.A., History, University of Oklahoma, 2007). Current research: Judaism in West Africa, Identity Studies, Memory Studies, Material Culture.

Nana Osei-Opare: Ph.D., UCLA Department of History (M.A., History, Stanford University, 2011; A.B. with Honors, History, Stanford University, 2011). Current research: Intellectual African History, Nkrumaism, Ghana, Convention People's Party, State Capitalism, Modernization, Soviet Influences upon Africa and African influences upon the Soviet Union, & Intellectual Networks.

Madina Thiam: Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA Department of History (B.A., History and International Affairs, The George Washington University, 2012). Current research: the West African Sahel, Islam, mobility and freedom, global history, microhistory.

Previous Members: