Madina Thiam
Biography
I completed my PhD in May 2022, with a dissertation entitled “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Frontiers of Liberation and Geographies of Belonging in an Atlantic-Saharan Crossroads.”
I’m currently an Assistant Professor of African History at New York University. For more information, please visit my website.
Advanced to Candidacy
Subfield
Islam
Mali and the Sahel
Black Women’s History
Saharan and Atlantic Worlds
Slavery, Race and Capitalism
Mobility, Migrations, and African Diaspora
Research
Broadly speaking, my research interests span African migrations and the connected social and intellectual histories of Islam and race-making across the Atlantic and Saharan worlds. My dissertation, entitled “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Mobilities, Connectivity, and Islam, 1804-1960,” probes historical intersections between freedom, mobility, Islam and political change in the Sahel, adopting a global and micro-historical approach. It draws on research I conducted in Mali, Senegal, France, England, Ireland, and Jamaica.
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. 5&6 Special Issue / The Crisis in Mali and in the Sahel Region (2020), 21-23.
- “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 Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith. Aḥmad Lobbo, the Tārīkh al-fattāsh and the Making of an Islamic State in West Africa, by Mauro Nobili. Islamic Africa XI, no. 2 (2021): 257–260.
- 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 (selected)
- “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
Awards & Grants
(Selected)
- 2021 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
- 2020 Bernadotte E. Schmitt Research Grant, American Historical Association
- 2020 Penny Kanner Dissertation Research Fellowship, UCLA Center for the Study of Women
- 2018 Mellon/SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship
- 2016 Student Travel Award, African Studies Association
Conference Presentations
(Selected)
Invited Lectures
- 2021 Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, “African Feminisms” (ASWAD Webinar)
- 2021 Boston University, “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel (1805-1836) (Walter Rodney Seminar)
- 2021 Bard College, “Writing Family Histories: Power, Stigma, and Malian Archives” (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA)
- 2020 UIUC, “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Transnational Politics, Islamic Networks and Memory in Colonial Mopti” (Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA), (‘Timbuktu Talks’ Series)
- 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)
Conferences and Workshops
- 2021 African Studies Association Meeting: “After the Caliphate: Mopti, US-RDA, and Mahammadu Caam’s Fuutanke Archipelago (1940s-1960s)” (Washington, DC, USA
- 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 Luskin Center for History and Policy Fellows Seminar: “Developing a New Approach to Migration and Policy-Making in Africa” (Los Angeles, CA, 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)
- 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)
Media
- 2021 History Hit Documentary: ‘Pinches of Salt and Gold. Uncovering Mansa Musa’s Story’ (London, UK)
- 2020 Africa is a Country AIAC Talk on the protests in Bamako
- 2019 Le Monde Documentary: ‘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)
