Madina Thiam
I work on Mali and the Sahel, with broad interests in African migrations and the connected social and intellectual histories of Islam across the Atlantic and Saharan worlds.
In addition, I'm a member of the Projet Archives des Femmes, a Bamako-based digitization project. We are collecting, safeguarding, and creating a public archive of papers of Malian women involved in the 1950s movement for independence, and post-colonial feminist activism. I'm also part of a working-group on contemporary migrations in southern Africa, under the direction of E. Tendayi Achiume. Lastly, I host a podcast on the New Books Network, and served as co-editor-in-chief of Ufahamu: a Journal of African Studies.
Prospective students: feel free to email me if you have any questions!
Field of Study
Subfield
Mali and West Africa
The Sahel and Sahara
The Atlantic Ocean
Islam
African Women
Mobility, Migrations, and Diasporas
Freedom and Slavery
Race and Capitalism
Research
Publications
Peer-reviewed
- “Women in Mali.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press, 2016–. Article published October 27, 2020.
- “History of Mali: Connectivity and State Formation since the 18th Century” (with Gregory Mann.) In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press, 2016–. Article published October 27, 2020.
Book Chapters and Other Adademic Writings
- “Struggle, Neglect and Archives,” Council for the Development of the Social Sciences in Africa (CODESRIA) Bulletin no. 4&5 (2020). Forthcoming.
- "Nicholas Said, étonnant voyageur." In Sahara, mondes connectés, edited by Sophie Caratini, Charles Grémont, Céline Lesourd et Olivier Schinz, 75-9. Paris: Gallimard, 2019.
Reviews
- Review of Mali Blues, by Gregor Lutz. Research Africa Reviews 2, no. 2 (2018): 46-48.
- Review of Etre Etudiant au Mali, by Boubacar Sangaré. Ufahamu: a Journal of African Studies 40, no. 2 (2018): 179-182.
Media/Public Scholarship
- "From the Niger to the Nile," Africa Is a Country, 2020
- "Le Mali ne doit pas devenir..." (with the Benbere collective), Le Monde, 2019
- “De Tombouctou à la Jamaïque : les voyages d’Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq,” Libération, 2018
- “History, Policy and Politics at the UNESCO,” Luskin Center for History and Policy, 2018
- "Mali and the Empire State of Mind,” Africa Is a Country, 2015
Grants and Awards
(Selected)
- 2020 Project Grant, Modern Endangered Archive Program
- 2020 Bernadotte E. Schmitt Research Grant, American Historical Association
- 2020 Penny Kanner Dissertation Research Fellowship, UCLA Center for the Study of Women
- 2018-2019 Innovation Grant, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy
- 2018-2019 Mellon-International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council
- 2017 & 2016 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Award, UCLA Graduate Division
- 2016 Student Travel Award, African Studies Association
Conference Presentations
Invited Lectures
- 2020 UIUC, "Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Transnational Politics and Islamic Networks in Colonial Mopti" (Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA) [open to the public: registration link]
- 2019 CSULB, "Women and Decolonization in Francophone West Africa" (Long Beach, CA, USA)
- 2019 UWI-Mona, “Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq and the Muslim Sahel in Translation” (Kingston, Jamaica)
Academic Conferences and Workshops
- 2020 African Studies Association Meeting: "After the Caliphate: Mopti, US-RDA, and Mahammadu Caam's Fuutanke Archipelago (1940s-1960s)" (Washington, DC, USA; accepted and postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19)
- 2020 American Historical Association Meeting: “'Absolutely and utterly free.' Kinship, Muslim Education and Emancipation between Jamaica and the Middle Niger, c. 1790-1853" (New York, NY, USA)
- 2019 Africa, Globalization and The Muslim Worlds Conference: “‘Beyond Timbuktu’: Sahelian Networks and Texts in Pre-Emancipation Jamaica” (Cambridge, MA, USA)
- 2019 Forum Transregionale Studien "Rethinking Refuge" Workshop: "Continuities of Statelessness in Southern Africa” (Berlin, Germany)
- 2019 Luskin Center for History and Policy Fellows Seminar: "Developing a New Approach to Migration and Policy-Making in Africa" (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
- 2018 Global Africa and Ethnographies of Interconnection Workshop: "Using 19th-century Sahelian Narratives to Write Global History" (Cornell, NY, USA)
- 2017 International Conference of the Dakar Institute of African Studies: "African Men of Letters, Atlantic Slavery, and the Intellectual History of the Sahel, 19th and 20th c." (Dakar, Senegal)
- 2017 ULCA HGSA Conference: "Empire State of Mind: Best of Intentions, Unsolicited Interventions, and the 2012 Crisis in Mali" (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
- 2016 African Studies Association Conference: "A Trail of Scented Salams: Migrating and Settling along the Tarīq-al-Sūdān in the 19th and 20th centuries" (Washington DC, USA)
- 2016 University of Bern 'Transpositions' Summer School: "Westerners along the Nile: West African Muslims in Sudan in the 19th and 20th centuries" (Kandersteg, Switzerland)
Public Conferences and Media
- 2020 Africa is a Country AIAC Talk on the protests in Bamako
- 2019 Le Monde Documentary Feature: 'PANAFRICAIN.E.S: Cheikh Anta Diop, l'historien révolutionnaire' with Coumba Kane, (Paris, France)
- 2019 NationWide FM Radio Interview: ‘Talking History’ with Prof. Verene Shepherd (Kingston, Jamaica)
- 2017 UNESCO World Heritage Young Professionals Forum: “Memory: Lost and Recovered Heritage” (Warsaw & Krakow, Poland) [Photos] [Video] [Video]
- 2016 UCLA Futures of History Conference: "The Futures of History: What Do We See and Envision?" (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Advisors
Degrees
C. Phil., History, UCLA, 2018
M.A., History, UCLA, 2017
B.A., History and International Affairs, Economics Minor, George Washington University, 2012