Dear ASWAD Family, 

Join us on March 2, 2024 as we pay tribute to Professor Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo. Through her unwavering commitment to Africana liberation and human rights, and her relentless fight against colonialism, oppression, neo-colonialism and injustice, Professor Mũgo was a giant in her field. 

Chaired by ASWAD Secretary, Maureen-Maisha Auma, with Michael Gomez, Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, Wangui wa Goro, Professor of Translation Practice at SOAS, and historian, scholar, and community activist Dr. Rahab Njeri, as they discuss the life and impact of one of ASWAD's Co-Founders.

The link to register is below, and we look forward to you joining us as we pay our respects and remember Professor Mũgo with fondness

A full obituary can be found here:  https://obits.burnsgarfield.com/obituaries/micere-mugo

About Our Panel

Michael A. Gomez is currently Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, and the director of NYU’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD), having served as the founding director of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) from its inception in 2000 to 2007. He is also the founding editor of the Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora (Cambridge U. Press), and the general editor of its Cambridge History of the African Diaspora, a three-volume series scheduled for 2025. He has chaired of the History Departments at both NYU and Spelman College, and was President of UNESCO's International Scientific Committee for the Slave Route Project from 2009 to 2011.

His first book, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (Cambridge University Press, 1992), examines a Muslim polity in what is now eastern Senegal. The next publication, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (UNC Press, 1998), is concerned with questions of culture and race. The edited volume, Diasporic Africa: A Reader (NYU Press, 2006), is more fully involved with the idea of an African diaspora, as is Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (Cambridge U. Press, 2005 and 2019). The monograph, Black Crescent: African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge U. Press, 2005) explores the experiences of  African Muslims in bondage and freedom throughout the Americas, integrating Islamic Africa into the analysis. Gomez’s most recent book, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton U. Press, 2018), a comprehensive study of polity and religion during the region’s most iconic moment, was awarded the 2019 African Studies Association’s Book Prize (formerly known as the Herskovits Book Award), and the 2019 American Historical Association’s Martin A. Klein Prize in African History. Gomez, a recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2023 Award for Scholarly Distinction, supports the struggles of African people worldwide.

Professor Wangui wa Goro is also a Professor of Translation Practice at SOAS. She serves as Visiting academic as part of the Practice of Leadership programme with the African Leadership Centre.  She is a widely acclaimed translator, writer, poet, academic, cultural curator, editor with a great passion for languages, literature and intersectional freedom. She has served as an academic and supports academic work through service areas of her academic interest, such as the Women’s Studies of the UK, African Studies Association, African Literature Association and International Association of Translation Studies (IATIS) and as a reviewer and editor. She has worked in an international organisation for the last 15 years.

She has enjoyed a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarity in her working and academic life and has spent forty years as a public intellectual. She has spoken extensively in many parts of the world and in the media. 

Dr. Rahab Njeri is a historian, scholar, and community activist, moderator as well as curator. Njeri is a mother of two children. 
Njeri is actively engaged in the Restitution debate in her city. She serves as a board member of several organizations, including the Health Committee of the City of Köln, Postkoloniales Erbe (Postcolonial Heritage Köln), ANSA e.V. (DAAD) and International African School.

She is the founder of KEMET AWARDS FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN AFRICAN LANGUAGES (KAAAL Awards) whose patron is Prof. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. She currently works as a consultant for developing antiracist and anti-discrimination policies and strategies at the University of Cologne (UoC).

This event was recorded and is available on our YouTube Channel