FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2025
Contact: Alix Saba, Executive Director, asaed@africanstudies.org
Download a PDF version to share with colleagues here.
African Studies Association Announces 2025 Finalists and Awardees
PISCATAWAY, New Jersey, – The African Studies Association is honored to announce its annual awards heralding some of the most prominent contributions to the field of African studies. The ASA will announce the honors and winners during the organization’s 68th Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA November 20-22.
The ASA Distinguished Africanist Award will honor the life work of Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and David Wiley (Michigan State University). Each year, the African Studies Association presents the Distinguished Africanist Award to members who have made extraordinary contributions to the field.
Previous honorees include Kenneth Harrow, Richard Joseph, Steve Howard, Brenda Randolph, and Frederick Cooper, and Pearl Robinson.
****
Each year, the African Studies Association presents the ASA Outstanding Service Award to a member of the association who has distinguished themselves through their dedication to the ASA’s mission by facilitating the production of knowledge about Africa and its diasporas; its dissemination within the academy or in civil society; or by establishing or supporting collaborations and exchanges between institutions in the global north and in Africa.
The ASA will present the 2025 Outstanding Service Award to Trevor Getz (San Francisco State University).
****
Established in 1965, the ASA Best Book Prize recognizes the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English and distributed in the United States during the preceding year.
The finalists for the 2025 ASA Best Book Prize are: Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City (Ohio University Press, 2024); Merrill Baker-Medard, Feminist Conservation (Yale University Press, 2024); Jody Benjamin, The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700–1850 (Ohio University Press, 2024); Mingwei Huang, Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke University Press, 2024); Prita Meier, The Surface of Things (Princeton University Press, 2024); and Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke University Press, 2024).
The ASA Best Book Prize winner will be announced during the annual Awards Ceremony.
****
The ASA’s Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize recognizes the best book on East African studies published in the previous calendar year. Established in 2012, the award is named in honor of Prof. Bethwell A. Ogot, a leading Kenyan historian, public servant and public intellectual, made possible by a generous bequest from the estate of Prof. Kennell Jackson, Jr., of Stanford University.
The finalists for the 2025 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize are: Nicki Kindersley, New Sudans (Cambridge University Press); Prita Meier, The Surface of Things (Princeton University Press); China Scherz, George Mpanga, and Sarah Namirembe, Higher Powers: Alcohol and After in Uganda’s Capital City (University of California Press); and Kimberly Wortmann, Society of the Righteous: Ibadhi Muslim Identity and Transnationalism in Tanzania (Indiana University Press).
The Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize winner will be announced during the annual Awards Ceremony.
****
The ASA Board of Directors established the annual Graduate Student Paper Prize in 2001 and singles out an exceptional student essay presented at the previous year’s ASA Annual Meeting.
The winner of the2025 Graduate Student Paper Prize is Amanda Kaminsky (University of Michigan), “Zicha: The National and Global Aspirations of Kenyan Purple Tea.”
In 2025, the committee selected two Honorable Mentions: Lyna Ami Ali (Emory University); “Co-opting the voices of our grandmothers: Frantz Fanon and the Algerian radio,” and Radwa Saad (Cornell University),” “Emancipation Through Arms: Ruptures and Continuities in Egypt’s Conscription Doctrines.”
****
The ASA’s Sembène-Kelani Film Prize is awarded annually for an outstanding film, whether fiction or documentary, made in the preceding two calendar years by an African filmmaker. Established in 2019 as the ASA Film Prize, this prize was made possible by a generous gift from Kenneth W. and Elizabeth W. Harrow through the establishment of the Ken Harrow ASA Film Fund.
The winner of the 2025 Sembène-Kelani Film Prize is The Fisherman directed by Zoey Martinson (2024). The film will be screened at the ASA Annual Meeting on November 20 to be followed by a Q&A.
In 2025, the committee selected two Honorable Mentions: Le panthéon de la joie directed by Jean Odoutan (2023) and Demba directed by Mamadou Dia (2024).
****
The ASA’s Gretchen Walsh Book Donation Award is selected by the Africana Librarians Council and offers an annual grant to support shipping costs to send books to African libraries and schools.
The 2025 Gretchen Walsh Book Donation Award Committee selected the African Humanities Research and Development Circle, of the Department of History and International Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, a partnership between Egodi Uchendu (University of Nigeria, Nsukka) and Carolyn A. Brown (Rutgers University).
****
The Mahmoud Mohamed Taha Student Travel Award facilitates research, study abroad, and/or travel to present research at the ASA Annual Meeting. The award was established in 2023 by a generous gift from Dr. Steve Howard and is named in honor of Sudanese author, activist, and intellectual Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1909-1985). The award was expanded in 2024 and again in 2025 thanks to generous gifts from Dr. Steve Howard.
The nine recipients of the 2025 Mahmoud Mohamed Taha Student Travel Award are: Nura Abubakar (Ohio University), Deborah Ariyo (University of Alabama), Oumarou Abdoulaye Balarabe (Ohio University), Sarah Djos-Raph (University of Louisiana – Lafayette), Joyce Adeola Jekanioluwa (University at Buffalo), Michael Larbi(University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee), Oyedele Oluokun (University of Mississippi – Oxford), Azeez Sikiru (New York University), and Zainab Winjobi-Arikewuyo (Florida State University).
****
The Paul Hair Prize is awarded in odd years to recognize the best critical edition or translation into English of primary source materials on Africa published during the preceding two years. The prize was initiated in 1993 and honors Professor Paul E. H. Hair (1926-2001) of the University of Liverpool. The prize was made possible by a generous give from Dr. David Henige.
The winner of the 2025 Paul Hair Prize is The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdalla’s Voice of Agony (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Abdilatif Abdalla. Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula and edited by Annmarie Drury.
