The Islam in Africa program is part of an ongoing initiative to increase the profile of Islamic and African Studies at Harvard University.  Beginning in 2012, a permanent chair for the study of Islam in Africa was endowed to Harvard's Divinity School, currently held by Professor Ousmane Kane.  The following year, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations founded one of the country’s first Islam in Africa tracks for PhD students.  A joint effort by the Harvard Divinity School, the Center for African Studies, and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program launched the annual Islam in Africa Speaker Series shortly thereafter, bringing to campus more than a dozen researchers and academics working on Islam and Africa.  In 2016, graduate students started the Islamic Africa Seminar, a bi-weekly research forum for Harvard faculty and students in the field.  The success of the initiatives resulted a three day conference gathering some two dozen specialists of Islamic Africa in spring 2017.  The session, Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa,  was the first of Harvard's Islam in Africa conference series, an annual event highlighting the field's most innovative research and emerging scholars. 

 

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