New Visiting Research Fellows at HUMA
We are delighted to welcome 14 new visiting research fellows to the HUMA space to share in dialogue, discussion, and research collaboration as we reopen the Institute for the second semester of 2025. The visiting scholars come from many parts of the world including Mali, Brazil, Sweden, Cameroon, Morocco, Senegal, France, Nigeria, and Madagascar.
The HUMA Visiting Research Fellowship programme is an integral part of the institute and intends to create supportive and productive relationships with individuals and institutions elsewhere – with a particular emphasis on appropriate partnerships in other parts of the South. These relationships are critical in advancing many of the Institute’s aims.
Visiting scholars are expected to contribute actively to the intellectual life of the Institute, including in supporting doctoral students and postdocs. For aspirant young scholars, the circulation of intellectually engaging visitors through the Institute is critical to the experience of a dynamic, cosmopolitan academy.
The fellows are also invited to present their research to the HUMA community and beyond as part of the Ataya Interdisciplinary Seminar Series.
Read about some fellows and their research interests below:
Mariame Sidibe is a lecturer-researcher at the University of Legal and Political Sciences of Bamako, within the Faculty of Administrative and Political Sciences. She is also the head of the PASAS project (Platform for Analysis, Monitoring, and Learning in the Sahel), funded by the French Development Agency (AFD) and implemented by IRD (Institute of Research for Development) and ICE (International Consulting Expertise). PASAS is an operational platform for the production and dissemination of knowledge. PASAS is aimed at informing strategic and operational decisions for development actors and guiding their interventions in fragile and crisis-affected areas in the Sahel. PASAS primarily supports AFD operations, particularly those dedicated to peacebuilding and crisis response, but is designed in a way that allows it to benefit both national and international partners. Mariame holds a PhD in Political Science from IEP Bordeaux, specializing in migration, conflict, and security issues. Her thesis was titled "A Sociopolitical Approach to the Refugee Issue in the Crisis of the State in Mali: The Case of Malian Refugees from the Tillaberi Region in Niger."
Yousra Hamdaoui is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences of Mohamedia at the University Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco. Her current research at HUMA focuses on the role of AI in scholarly publishing, particularly how editors perceive its impact on ethical policies, authority, and governance. She is interested in issues related to security, counter-terrorism, violent extremism, and soft power in the Sahel and North Africa and has conducted fieldwork in Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Senegal, and Morocco. Her post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town focused on scholarly publishing in Africa, particularly in North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Yousra is also a Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellow (2024-2025).
Georges Macaire Eyenga is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Dschang (Cameroon). He is also a Research Fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). He holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Yaoundé II (2015) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Paris Nanterre (2019). Since 2025, Georges has led the Research Unit for Political, Strategic, and Social Analysis (URPOSSOC) -- the university’s main political science laboratory. His research explores African technoscapes, focusing on surveillance technologies, biometrics, medical drones, and digital platforms. Georges has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (2015), the Gerda Henkel Foundation Fellowship (2020), the IUSSP Population, Ethics, and Human Rights Fellowship (2023), and the Standard Bank Chair Fellowship (2024). He is also a member of the editorial board of Cahiers d'Études Africaines, published by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in France.
Oumy Thiongane teaches environmental sociology at the Université Assane Seck de Ziguinchor (UASZ), Senegal. Trained in ethnology at Paris VIII and in social sciences and Health at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), she completed a PhD on meningitis epidemics in Niger, focusing on the politics of epidemic response in West Africa. She also holds a degree in Ethics and Law of Artificial Intelligence from the University of Artois and is certified as an AI Ethics Officer. Her research combines medical anthropology, public health, and environmental studies, with broad fieldwork in West Africa, Western Europe, and the Balkans and extensive collaborations with international research institutions including IRD, CIRAD. She has published on epidemics and technologies, inequalities in health, pharmaceutical politics, digital health surveillance. Oumy also works on agroecology and socio-environmental transitions, developing forest gardens in France and Senegal. In addition to academic publications, she is engaged in science communication and podcast production on decolonizing Global Health in Francophone Africa.
Idy Diop is a Full Professor of signal processing, image processing, and digital communication (error correcting codes) at the École Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP) of Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal. As a member of the Scientific and Pedagogical Committee (CSP), he is the Scientific Secretary of the Doctoral School of Mathematics and Computer Science (EDMI) at UCAD and was a member of the technical committee that oversaw the design and construction of Senegal's first satellite (GaindeSat). His research topics focus on image processing, IoT, artificial intelligence, security, error correcting and applications. Idy is a consultant and evaluator for several research projects focusing on AI in the medical field, notably with African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS) in Nairobi, Kenya and Lacuna Fund. He is a member of several research associations at both the national (Association of Computer Science and Applications Researchers of Senegal) and international levels (AI4D research network set up as part of the AI4D scholarship program coordinated by ACTS). He is also an associate researcher at several research organizations at both the national and international levels, including the Mathematical and Computer Modeling of Complex Systems Unit (UMMISCO UCAD), where he is the head of the Fablab set up in Dakar.
Zarreen Kamalie is a doctoral student at Stockholm University. Zarreen studies the Kigali start-up ecosystem through the policies, laws, and development agendas that facilitates financial and social capital into the ecosystem from both public and private sector actors seeking to create 'impact' and capitalise on Rwanda's growing economy and its business environment. These actors include development agencies, philanthropic institutions, and venture capital firms. The project sits at the intersection of economic anthropology and development studies, with thematic overlap with sociolegal studies and the anthropology of policy. Zarreen completed her MA at Stockholm University after receiving her BA and Honour’s degrees at the University of Cape Town. She is also an affiliated PhD student in the Sustainable Business Development through Entrepreneurship and Innovation Platform at the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets (Misum).
Messi Nguelé Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Yaoundé I. He defended his PhD in Computer Science in 2018 in cotutelle between University Grenoble Alpes and University of Yaounde I. Messi is Head of the Department of Computer Engineering at ESTLC of the University of Ebolowa and Head of the Computer Science and Applications Laboratory at Ambam. He teaches programming courses (C, Python) and distributed learning courses on parallel architectures. His research focuses on the parallelization of machine learning algorithms. He is a recipient of Africom Award Mobily for Staff (July 2022) and a recipient of the ACTS AI4D Africa funding (August 2022 - August 2024). Messi was a visiting researcher at University of Grenoble (September 2023 and February 2025), is affiliated with the Idasco research team (Data Sciences and Complex Systems) in its HiPerDas (Hiper Performance Data Science) branch, the president of ARITeD research association, the Education Officer of the Cameroon Computer Science Society, and Treasurer of the Cameroon Artificial Intelligence Society.
We are delighted to host these scholars at the institute and invite all to their Ataya seminars scheduled for the semester.