Post-Doctoral Fellow receives ASA Presidential Fellowship 2019

APC Post-doctoral Fellow Susana Molins Lliteras, received the prestigious African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential Fellowship for 2019. Susana was one among four fellows nominated by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The objective of the Fellowship is to invite outstanding Africa-based scholars to attend the ASA Annual Meeting and to spend time at African Studies Programmes in the US.

Susana was invited to three different universities where she presented papers and had meetings with local faculty. The first was Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois, where she was hosted by ISITA (Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa) and the Program of African Studies. She presented a talk entitled "Iconic Archive: Timbuktu and its Manuscripts in Public Discourse," based on her chapter in the APC's upcoming publication, Babel Unbound. She then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she presented a talk based on her work on the Fondo Kati entitled "A Forgery at Work: The Case of the Fondo Kati in Timbuktu" as part of the Center for African Studies seminar series. She finally went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey where she was hosted by Center for African Studies, and co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies, the Department of History and the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages. At Rutgers she presented a talk, which complemented Rutgers' own interesting Global Timbuktu Initiative (https://ruafrica.rutgers.edu/resources/global-timbuktu).

For the last part of the trip, Susana was hosted for five days at the ASA 62nd Annual Meeting,"Being, Belonging and Becoming in Africa," in Boston from 20-23 November. As a Presidential Fellow, she attended several additional meetings during this period, such as the "Past, Present and Future Leadership Dinner," and the "ACLS Centennial Conversation" reception which provided opportunity for networking and engaging in discussions about the state and prospects of African Studies and the Humanities in academia. She also presented her talk on "Iconic Archive" for the Presidential Panel during the conference and attended interesting talks on West and East African History, "Author Meets Critic" Book panels, and reconnected with numerous colleagues from around the globe. The conference ended with an Awards and Prize-Giving evening when the Presidential Fellows were recognised, along with the Book Prize winners and the Distinguished Africanist, Prof Pearl Robinson (see here for details: https://africanstudies.org/).