African Studies Now

This edited volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving landscape of African studies in the new millennium. It details new trends, approaches, and theoretical frameworks that have the potential to shape the future of the discipline. Curated by the up-and-coming scholar Eric Tsimi in collaboration with the distinguished anthropologist Andrea Behrends and field-leading decolonial theorist Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, this collection explores methods and approaches being developed across the humanities and social sciences for decolonizing knowledge, facilitating knowledge transfer, and addressing perceived gaps between theory and practical emergencies.

For its broad coverage of a broad interdisciplinary field, as well as for its in-depth insights into the latest developments within the field as a whole, African Studies Now is a must-have for researchers and students of African studies, global development, indigenous studies, and related fields and disciplines.

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a Zimbabwean-born historian and a leading theorist of decolonial studies. He is Professor of History and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Pluralistic Societies at the University of Calgary in Canada. Previously, he was Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, and he has also served in professorial roles at UNISA in South Africa.

Eric Essono Tsimi is Associate Professor of Francophone African Studies at Northwestern University, USA. His research links literature, political culture, and the economies of publishing in Francophone Africa, with particular emphasis on racialization, editorial ecologies, and decolonial critique. He holds dual doctorates from the University of Virginia and from Université Grenoble-Alpes/Lausanne. A writer across genres including scholarship, fiction, and essays, he also contributes to public debate in venues such as Le Monde, Jeune Afrique, and The Conversation.

Andrea Behrends is Professor of Anthropology and Head of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. Her work analyzes mobility, displacement, conflict, aid, and resource governance in African contexts, with long-term fieldwork in the Chad–Sudan borderlands and West Africa. Prior to Leipzig, she held the professorship in Social and Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Africa at the University of Bayreuth, and she served as President of the African Studies Association in Germany (VAD) from 2021 to 2023.