Paul Tiyambe Zeleza - Research and Scholarship

Research and Scholarship

Zeleza is widely recognized as one the leading authorities on African economic history. His book A Modern Economic History of Africa won the 1994 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, the continent's most prestigious book award. The jury citation noted:

"the book is an exercise in historical reconstruction, and its strength and distinction above all lies in its bold and convincing challenge to hitherto accepted orthodoxies, terminologies, and interpretations, about the nature and development of African societies and economies. The book is an outstanding, pioneering work, destined to become highly influential, and providing such a wealth of information and detail as to elevate the study of African economic history to a new pedestal."

Over the years, Zeleza has also established himself as a leading intellectual historian of Africa, with influential publications on the development of ideas and higher education institutions. His scholarly output and reputation also extends to gender studies, human rights studies and diaspora studies. In 2003, he was appointed by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) to a nine-member advisory board to oversee the publication of "Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World", a research study issued to mark the 10th anniversary of, and assess progress since, the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995.

He is currently working on a project, "Africa and Its Diasporas: Dispersals and Linkages", that seeks to trace the dispersal of African peoples globally (Asia, Europe, and the Americas), the formation of African diasporas in different world regions, and the linkages established between these diasporas and Africa over the centuries. The project is funded by a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.

Zeleza is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at international conferences and to give public lectures across the world. Among the numerous conferences where he has given keynote addresses are those organized by UNESCO in Paris in December 2003 and the Association of African Universities in Cape Town in February 2005. In 1995, he was one of six African intellectuals invited by the Japanese government for a three-week tour of Japan, and he revisited several Japanese universities in 2004 at the invitation of the Japanese Association of African Studies. In Asia, he has also visited China and South Korea, and in Europe, he has been invited to France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Britain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, while in the Americas he has been to several Caribbean islands, Venezuela and Brazil. As for Africa, he has been invited to and visited more than twenty countries, from Egypt to South Africa. In 2006, he was appointed Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Historical Studies, the African Gender Institute, and the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town.