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Speaker event: Being an African Francophone Refugee Scholar in American Academia

March 31, 2023 @
2:00 p.m.
- 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time
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Picture of Dr. Alfred Babo
Dr. Alfred Babo

Please join us for a special event featuring Dr. Alfred Babo, who was an internationally known professor of development and anthropology at the national university in Côte d’Ivoire before becoming a political refugee in 2013. He taught at Clark through the Scholars at Risk program; he is now affiliated with Fairfield University.

Dr. Alfred Babo is an interdisciplinary scholar with expertise and experience in the anthropology of development, political science, and African studies. He has presented his work nationally and internationally and published it in many peer-reviewed journals in the U.S., Africa, Europe, and Asia. He has written articles and essays on sustainable development, social change and community development, immigration, and post-conflict society, published in English and French. His recent and current research projects and publications focus on the issue of refugees’ activism in Africa and acculturation in the U.S.

His article, “38 Paradise Road: Being an African Francophone Refugee Scholar in American Academia,” from which today’s lecture is drawn, was published in the Journal of International Mobility. The article has been welcomed as a significant contribution to the fields of reflexive anthropology and refugee studies. It was recently (February 2023) featured as one of the two required readings, along with the well-known paper “We Refugees” by Hannah Arendt, at the Refuge at Risk: Concepts, Infrastructures, Futures conference at the University of California Irvine.

On February 8, 2023, Dr. Babo received the Fairfield University 2023 Martin Luther King Vision Award to recognize his engagement with refugees and vulnerable individuals.