IAS-UI is host to two beneficiaries of the African Humanities Program (AHP) Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

Dr Sharlene Khan (PhD, Goldsmiths, University of London) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Fine Art, Rhodes University, South Africa. She is with IAS-UI on a two-month residency until 15 March, 2018. Dr Khan’s specialism is Art History and Visual Culture, and her research interests encompass race studies, black-Afrocentric and feminist creative strategies, postcolonialism, African literature and decolonized aesthetics, among others. An artist in her own right, Dr Khan deploys a variety of media in her installations and performances to dramatize the predicament of her post-apartheid South African society. Researching on ‘Masquerading as a South African postcolonial visual arts strategy’, she calls attention to and critiques the constructedness of identity and social reality in such culture-formative spheres as education, art discourse, historical narratives, and popular culture.

Dr Amidou Jean-Baptiste Sourou is a Lecturer in Social Sciences at Saint Augustine University, Tanzania. He studied philosophy and theology in Assisi and Padua, and holds a master’s in theology from Saint Bonaventure University, Rome. He specialized in radio and newspaper journalism at the Gregorian University and has a PhD in the Social Sciences, with a thesis that investigates the interface between forms of African orature and mediated public mass communication, especially in the realms of entertainment and religion. Dr Sourou, who is with IAS-UI until 26 March 2018, is researching on the topic ‘Performing Social Changes: Music and Dance at Weddings and Funerals in West Africa’. His research interests span rites, music, dance, corporeality, popular cultures, and the articulation of rituals in modern media.