UM Directory

Education

• Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
• M.A., University of Oregon
• B.A., University of Montana

Current Position

Director | Franke Global Leadership Initiative

Courses Taught

Franke Global Leadership Initiative: 

• GBLD 110: Global Challenges and Leadership
• GBLD 194: Franke GLI seminar on migration and refugees

History:

• HSTR 353: Modern France
• HSTR 391: Modern African History
• HSTR 391: The Cold War in Global Perspective (online)
• HSTR 391: Africa since 1945
• HSTR 391: Comparative Genocide
• HSTR 391: Europe and Refugees: A History

African-American Studies:

• AAS 208H: Africa: From Egypt to Apartheid's Origins (online)
• AAS 291: A History of South Africa (online)

Davidson Honors College:

• Ways of Knowing
• The Holocaust

Teaching Experience

Visiting Professor (2014-2021)

• History
• African-American Studies
• Franke Global Leadership Initaitive
• Davidson Honors College

Research Interests

• migration
• colonialism and decolonization
• political protest
• policing and state surveillance
• race, ethnicity, and identity 
• citizenship and belonging

Projects

• edited collection on anti-racism in France (in progress)
• biography of Sally N'Dongo (in progress)

Field of Study

Research interests include:
• Immigration, colonialism, and post-colonialism
• Surveillance and immigration policy
• Ethnicity, race, and identity
• Social history of medicine and public health
• Immigrant and immigrant-oriented associations and organizations
• Social welfare and immigrant communities
• Refugee resettlement
• Mass violence
• Skiing, leisure, mobility, vacationing, and popular culture

Selected Publications

My book, African Political Activism in Postcolonial France: State Surveillance and Social Welfare, explores the relationship between immigrant political activism, state surveillance, and social welfare from multiple perspectives while factoring the dynamics of colonialism, decolonization, and the Cold War. And it's relevant to today's debates about immigration, race, nationalism, and identity. 

Publications

Book:

• African Political Activism in Post-Colonial France: State Surveillance, and Social Welfare (Routledge 2018)

Articles:

• "Immigration After Empire: The African Immigrant Community, Political Activism, and the French Globalization Project in Postcolonial France" in French Globalization Projects ed. Matthias Middell (Leipzig: ReCentGlobe Publications, 2025).
• "L'art et la culture en la service de la cause immigree: Sally N'Dongo" (Hommes et Migrations 2023/3 no. 1342)
• "Marginalized, yet Mobilized: The UGTSF, African Immigration, and Racial Advocacy in Post-colonial France." French Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (May 2013).
• "Sally N'Dongo, African Immigration, and the Politics of Neocolonialism in France and West Africa." Migrance 39 (2012).
• "Gender and the French Ski Industry, 1946-1960." The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 37 (2010).
• "Policing the Post-Colonial Order: Surveillance and the African Immigrant Community in France, 1960-1979." Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 36 (Summer 2010), 108-126.
• "'Africans against Algerians, the exploited against the exploited': Media Representations of the 1963 Saint Denis Riot." The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 36 (2008).
• "Curing Patients, Connecting Lives: The Centre Medico-Social Bossuet, the West African Community, and the Struggle Against Tuberculosis, 1963-1979." The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 32 (2005).

Book Reviews:

• Review of Melissa K. Byrnes, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (H-Diplo September 2025)
• Review of Fabrice Longrognet, Neighbors of Passage: A Microhistory of Migrants in a Paris Tenement, 1882-1932 (H-France December 2023)
• Review of Katelyn Knox, Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France (H-France July 2018)
• Review of Ruth Ginio, The French Army and Its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (The Journal of Social History July 2017)
• Review of Annadith Schneider, Turkish Art, Immigration, and Narratives of Home in France (H-France July 2017)

Affiliations

• African-American Studies
• The Davidson Honors College

Professional Experience

• Director, Franke Global Leadership Initiative (2023-present)
• Associate Director, Franke Global Leadership Initiative (2022-2023)
• Director, UM Humanities Institute (2019-2023)
• Visiting Professor, History and African-American Studies (2014-2021)

International Experience

• Fulbright Scholar: Germany and Belgium
• International presentations: France, Germany, Britain, and Canada
• ISEP COIL Academy participant
• Title XI-funded course development: Chile and Argentina
• Dissertation and book manuscript research: France
• Instructor, U.S. History: Aalborg University, Denmark
• Undergraduate study abroad: France and Greece

Chair Director Departments

Director | Franke Global Leadership Initiative 

Member of the Editorial Board for the scholarly journal Immigrants and Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration, and Diaspora

Member of the Editorial Board for the scholarly journal French Historical Studies