News

FIG and EHESS Win Grant in African Studies

1/15/2009

The French Interdisciplinary Group (FIG) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) have won a major grant to form a partnership in the area of graduate education in African Studies. The grant, provided by the Partner University Fund of the Franco-American Cultural Exchange Foundation, will make several hundred thousand dollars available over the next several years to send Northwestern students to Paris, to Marseilles, and to EHESS’s partner universities in Africa for doctoral training and dissertation research, to bring EHESS students to Northwestern and the Herskovits Library for the same purpose, to allow Northwestern students to participate in EHESS Summer Research Seminars in Africa, to organize regular faculty visits between the two institutions, and to improve and intensify cooperation between the Herskovits Library and the new Bibliothèque Universitaire des Langues et Civilisations (BULAC) which is being established in Paris. The agreement enables Northwestern students to study or do research at EHESS’s partner universities in Africa, the Université de Niamey/LASDEL, the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, the Université de Kinshasa, and the University of Addis Abeba.

Northwestern and EHESS students who participate in this program become eligible for the PhD degree of the partner institutions. Northwestern students add an EHESS faculty member to their committee and spend two years in residence at one of the EHESS campuses in France or Africa. The Northwestern student and his or her EHESS adviser must also agree on a course of studies/research that is mutually acceptable and approved by the student’s Northwestern committee. Interested students should see Michael Loriaux, Co-Director of FIG, and consult with EHESS faculty during their annual visits. Aurélien Mauxion, PhD student in Anthropology, will pioneer this new program. Aurélien’s Northwestern adviser is Robert Launay, and his EHESS adviser is Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (also of the LASDEL, University of Niamey).