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African Studies Review 2025 Awardees
The ASR Best Africa-focused Anthology or Edited Collection Prize, sponsored by Cambridge University Press, recognizes editors and contributors to an anthology of original scholarship, cohesive in structure and interdisciplinary in nature, that advances African studies in new theoretical and/or methodological directions. The award recognizes the editor(s) and also the contributors as a whole. In making its selection the prize committee will pay particular attention to significance, originality, and quality of writing, and its contribution to advancing debates in African studies.
The winner of this year’s awardis Myles Osborne, Making Martial Races: Gender, Society and Warfare in Africa s (Ohio University Press, 2024).
The committee also selected two titles for honorable mention:
Nancy Rose Hunt and Hubertus Büschel, Psychiatric Contours: New African Histories of Madness, (Duke University Press, 2024).
Anthony A. Essien, Multilingualism and Mathematics Education in Africa, (Bloomsbury, 2024).
The ASR Best Africa-based Doctoral Dissertation Award recognizes an Africa-based doctoral student who has successfully defended their dissertation/doctoral thesis on any aspect of African studies at an African institution of higher education during the previous calendar year.
The winner of this year’s award is “Valerie Desmore’s Refusal(s): Art Practice as Biomythography,” by Nontobeko Ntombela Akoi-Jackson in Fine Art at University of Cape Town.
The committee also selected one dissertation for honorable mention:
“Les États Ouest-Africains Face à l’Expansion de l’Extrémisme Violent: Trajectoires Comparées au Mali, au Burkina Faso, et au Benin,” by Ayabavi Linda Ophéli Comlan Sessi in Governance, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the Pan-African University in Cameroon.
ASR Best Article Prize
The winner of this year’s award is Charles Lwanga, “‘Watch Your Tone!’: Bobi Wine’s ‘Tugambire ku Jennifer’ and the Kampala Street Vendors.” ASR 67.4 (December 2024): 920-940. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2024.137
The committee also selected one article for honorable mention:
Christopher Tounsel, “A Tale of Two Divestments: South Africa, Sudan and Howard University.” ASR 67.3 (September 2024): 590-609. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2024.97
