Biography
Mahmood Mamdani (Ph.D., Harvard, 1974) is appointed in both the Department of Political Science and the Department of Anthropology.
His current work takes as its point of departure his 1996 book, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism. He has two major interests. The first is in the reproduction of political identities. Starting with a historical exploration of political identities enforced by the colonial state, his research looks at the reform/reproduction of these through the definition of citizenship in the post-independence period. He frames these questions through empirical work in different African countries: e.g., South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria. His second interest is in the institutional reproduction of knowledge, particularly in what is called "African Studies."
