Desmond Fonseca
My research interests include Pan-Africanism, black Marxisms, and anti-colonialism with an emphasis on the decolonization of Lusophone Africa in the 1970s, into the neocolonial and neoliberal turn of the 1980s. I am also interested in the intellectual histories of and solidarities between tricontinental (Africa, Asia, the Americas) liberation movements. A thread which ties together these topics is the political and intellectual biography of Amilcar Cabral.
Subfield
Atlantic Field - Africa, United States, Global South
Grants and Awards
Schomburg-Mellon Summer Humanities Institute
Laidlaw Research and Leadership Scholarship
Gerald Gill Fellow
Best Honors Thesis (Department of Race, Colonialism and Diaspora Studies, Tufts University)
Vida H. Allen Prize
Albert Imlah Excellence in History Prize
Conference Presentations
“On the Right Side of the World Revolution: Local Movements and Global Visions,” panelist, January 22, 2020, MLK Symposium, Tufts University
“Looking for Moses: Angola in the Black Radical Imagination,” October, 2019, Graduate Conference of African American History, University of Memphis.
“A Luta Continua, Para Sempre: 1970s Angola, Black Radicalism and Diasporic Solidarity,” June 18, 2019, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Degrees
B.A., History and Africana Studies, Tufts University