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https://www.madinathiam.com/events/luttes-feminines-et-decolonisation-au-mali monthly 0.5 2022-12-01 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/african-history-and-the-making-of-a-classic-yambo-ouologuems-duty-of-violence monthly 0.5 2023-06-24 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/dans-les-plis-des-archives-audiovisuelles-africaines-temporalits-politiques-technologies monthly 0.5 2022-10-18 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/entender-el-sahel-contexto-y-aproximacin-para-la-geopoltica-de-la-regin monthly 0.5 2022-10-18 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/religion-and-democracy-on-the-african-continent-colonial-legacies-and-postcolonial-possibilities monthly 0.5 2022-04-06 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/aiac-talk-the-crisis-in-mali monthly 0.5 2021-10-29 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/africa-globalization-and-the-muslim-worlds-conference monthly 0.5 2023-11-29 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/putting-history-to-work-workshop monthly 0.5 2021-10-27 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/timbuktu-talk monthly 0.5 2021-10-20 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/walter-rodney-lecture monthly 0.5 2022-12-01 https://www.madinathiam.com/events/african-feminisms-roundtable monthly 0.5 2023-06-24 https://www.madinathiam.com/home daily 0.75 2022-12-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/793503e6-b022-477d-ad43-96bd66332892/Podor+2018.jpg Home Madina Thiam / Bio https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/f26cc687-6a1d-430c-84bc-8847b448cee8/Mamadou+Thiam.jpeg Home Madina Thiam / Research https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/92df535b-e30f-48e2-9e3c-912bb3087776/Salvador+2018.jpg Home Madina Thiam / Teaching https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/4cfeb5d6-098f-4d8f-b9d4-f2fffc02fde7/Marseille+2019.jpeg Home Madina Thiam / Editorial Work 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https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/9af7178c-1d28-44e7-9951-378271972c4f/IMG_4633.jpg home - I am a historian of Mali and the West African Sahel from the 18th through the 20th century. I am the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at Johns Hopkins University. I am currently completing Navel of the World, a book that offers a new history of slavery, revolution and empire in the modern world, told from the vantage point of African Muslims. Set in the Sahel, where the worlds of the Atlantic ocean and Sahara desert meet, the book charts a micro-history of social and economic change in the region from the 1790s through 1960, through the lens of intimate and family relationships. The book follows the extensive routes and networks that African Muslims from this region forged as they traveled and migrated, and sheds light on the lives of Sahelian women. In parallel, I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of West African History, and serve as co-director of the Projet Archives des Femmes. I received my PhD in African History from UCLA in 2022. In 2024, I was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and from 2022 to 2025, I was the James Weldon Johnson Assistant Professor of History at New York University. https://www.madinathiam.com/media daily 0.75 2026-03-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/1636055605320-4ZN5IKJC1TRG2YYBVIQX/Screen+Shot+2021-11-04+at+12.53.09+PM.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/167453fa-d627-4d9d-82c6-7d9865b08926/Screen+Shot+2022-10-18+at+12.09.01+AM.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/aa19f481-080b-463e-8e77-6b3c9f131ccf/Screenshot+2023-01-02+at+12.17.46+AM.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/2f1510d2-461f-423b-aa8f-1bf9737a48dd/IMG_6448-768x576.jpg media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/f3f7df93-0eb3-4753-bbf3-5767a3d21ba3/Screenshot+2025-01-20+at+20.02.38.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/6179c591-e6de-4447-9305-3ce8cfc4d9be/Screenshot+2025-02-09+at+19.31.55.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/149857db-e82d-463c-aa02-2471822759ef/Screenshot+2025-06-26+at+21.23.06.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/daf0315b-5de1-44fc-8375-7cac800a95cb/Screenshot+2025-06-30+at+23.22.14.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/9e257855-d75a-4ff5-9325-5210f00baffa/Screenshot+2025-06-30+at+23.23.46.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/0e3b0ef0-d58a-451a-ac7a-5105c37c6fce/Screenshot+2025-07-20+at+23.53.36.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/5371c74e-3209-46a7-bbfe-eec48400c741/1.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/1634658951292-0N9DZ7KEVNH0BKMJR62W/Screen+Shot+2021-10-19+at+8.55.18+AM.png media & public writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/9603702e-64fd-4a3e-bcc1-87f5673d3ac2/Screenshot+2025-02-08+at+00.01.06.png media & public writing https://www.madinathiam.com/writing daily 0.75 2025-11-17 https://www.madinathiam.com/research daily 0.75 2025-07-31 https://www.madinathiam.com/research/book2 monthly 0.5 2023-06-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/83d5238d-59fb-49b0-9811-217cd9eda3f3/2971908092.png research - Armed to the Teeth My next book project, Armed to the Teeth: Black Liberation and the Making of Africa’s Past, tells the interlinked stories of decolonization and the search for West Africa’s precolonial past. Why, in the 1960s-1970s, did research about West African history become central to struggles for decolonization, pan-Africanism, and Black liberation? What synergies and what tensions emerged from this dynamic? The book explores these question from the viewpoint of a variety of actors from around the Black world (novelists, musicians, Malian and Guinean state actors, archaeologists, UNESCO officials, as well as academic and non academic historians), who all, in one way or another, engaged West African history during this key era. I’ve written or spoken about parts of this project here, here, and here. https://www.madinathiam.com/research/book monthly 0.5 2025-07-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/616a4b74fc0dec74b576fe5a/d61f2ba6-795b-4df4-b47b-a1ba6c4e28e2/Thiam.jpg research - Navel of the World Navel of the World: an Intimate History of Muslim West Africa I am currently completing my first book manuscript. Navel of the World offers a novel account of changing landscapes of slavery and empire in the modern world, from the vantage point of African Muslims. Set in the Sahel, at the crossroads of the Atlantic and Saharan worlds, Navel of the World, charts social and political change in the region through the lens of intimate and family relationships. Between 1804-1960, the Sahel underwent major, successive shifts stemming from the gradual end of Atlantic slavery, a dynamic trans-Saharan trade in goods and people, a wave of West African Islamic revolutions, and European colonialism. During that time, Sahelian Muslims' circulations and networks of exchange spanned the lands tucked between the Senegal and Niger rivers, but also the expanse between the Caribbean and Red seas. Focusing on individuals who lived in, and circulated through, the Sahel’s storied Inland Delta, Navel of the World explores the way their families and intimate relationships were forged, broken, and remade in the furnace of these deep social and geopolitical reconfigurations. I approach those relationships as sites of encounter of intersecting histories, including that of Islam in Africa, slavery and capitalism in the Atlantic world, and decolonization. The research for this book was carried out in Mali, Senegal, France, England, Ireland and Jamaica.