Each year the editors of the African Studies Review, in consultation with the ASA Publications Committee, invite a leading scholar to prepare a lecture addressing knowledge or key debates of crucial interest to Africanists. The lecture may serve as a draft manuscript for submission to African Studies Review, to be submitted within 6-months of the lecture.
The lecturer will receive complimentary Annual Meeting registration, up to four nights in the conference hotel, roundtrip economy airfare up to $1,500, and a $1,000 honorarium payable in two $500 installments, (1) after the lecture and (2) after the submission of the manuscript. The manuscript will receive standard peer review.
ASR Distinguished Lecturers:
2025 Lewis R. Gordon
“Fanon’s African Dream”
2024 Chika Okeke-Agulu
“Restitution and the Postcolonial Museum”
2023 James Ogude
“Decoloniality and its fissures: Whose decolonial turn?”
2022 Amina Mama
“‘The Point is to Change the World’: Imagining Pan-African Epistemic Community in the Global Neoliberal Era”
“African Voices Matter: Fifty Years of Historical Research in Southern Africa”
2019 Fallou Ngom
“Beyond Orality: Non-Europhone Sources and African Studies in the 21st Century”
“When ‘green’ equals thorny and mean: The politics and costs of environmental experiments in East Africa”
“Youth Struggles: From the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter and Beyond”
2016 Peter Geschiere
“Tempting Transgressions – Same Sex Practices as a Challenge in African Studies” published as “A ‘Vortex of Identities’: Freemasonry, Witchcraft, and Postcolonial Homophobia”
“Re-viewing Studies on Africa, #Black Lives Matter, and Envisioning the Future of African Studies”
“Integrated Yet Marginalized: Implications of Globalization for African Development”
“African Women’s Movements in the Twentieth Century: A Hidden History”
2012 Murry Last
“Contradictions in Creating a Jihadi Capital: Sokoto in the Nineteenth Century and Its Legacy.”
2011 Thandika Mkandawire
“The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa.”
Dr. Mkandawire of the London School of Economics was the Inaugural Distinguished Lecturer at the 2011 African Studies Association Annual Meeting.
