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Contact Info:
Tufts University
Dept. of Political Science
Packard Hall
Medford, MA 02155

Office: 617.627.2035
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Associate Professor

Expertise
Comparative Politics, Africa, African-American Politics

Education
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1975

Biography
Pearl T. Robinson has authored more than 40 articles and book chapters on African and African American politics. She is co-author of Stabilizing Nigeria: Sanctions, Incentives, and Support for Civil Society (The Century Foundation Press) and co-editor and co-author of Transformation and Resiliency in Africa (Howard University Press). A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a past President of the African Studies Association, she has chaired the SSRC/ACLS Joint Committee on African Studies; served on the boards of Oxfam-America and TransAfrica; as a curriculum consultant for the PBS/BBC series The Africans: A Triple Heritage; and as an advisor for Hopes on the Horizon, a 2-hour documentary film about democratic movements in Africa during the 1990s. She is a past Director of Tufts' International Relations Program and has taught at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. In 2011 UC San Diego's Research Center in African and African American Studies named Robinson recipient of its Teshome H. Gabriel Distinguished Africanist Award. Her current projects include an intellectual biography of 1950 Nobel Peace laureate Ralph Bunche, and Mama Kiota!, a documentary film about Islam and female empowerment in Niger. Robinson spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger providing public health education in a rural Hausa town.

African Studies/Epistemology:

• 2007 African Studies Association Presidential Address, "Ralph Bunche and African Studies: Reflections on the Politics of Knowledge", African Studies Association Presidential Address 2007, African Studies Review, Vol. 51, No. 1 (April 2008): 1-16.

Working papers:

• "Islam and Female Empowerment and Female Empowerment Among the Tijaniyya in Niger", September 2005
• "Curriculum Co-Development with African Universities: Fostering International Dialogues Across Two Digital Divides", Paper prepared for "A Changing Landscape" Nuffic expert meeting on Effective Support to Tertiary Education and Research in Developing Countries, The Hague, The Netherlands May 23-25, 2005

Research

A Life Studying Africa: Professor Robinson has dedicated her career to the hands-on study of African politics, culture and life. Read the interview with Tufts E-News >