I am a historian of Mali and West Africa from the 18th through the 20th century.
I am currently completing Navel of the World, a book that offers a new history of slavery, revolution and empire in the modern world, told from the vantage point of African Muslims. Set in the Sahel, where the worlds of the Atlantic ocean and Sahara desert meet, the book charts a micro-history of social and economic change in the region from the 1790s through 1960, through the lens of intimate and family relationships. The book follows the extensive routes and networks that African Muslims from this region forged as they traveled and migrated, and sheds light on the lives of Sahelian women.
In parallel, I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of West African History, and serve as co-director of the Projet Archives des Femmes.
I received my PhD in African History from UCLA in 2022. In 2024, I was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and from 2022 to 2025, I was the James Weldon Johnson Assistant Professor of History at New York University.
CMS Photographie Bamako
