This will be a roundtable discussion of Research Africa, an Africa Initiative-funded mailing list. The purpose of the platform is to develop and facilitate a scholarly network on and about Africa and African issues. Its primary task is:

• to facilitate an exchange of information on publications, workshops, events, and conferences related to Africa;
• to facilitate an exchange of information between stakeholders of knowledge production in Africa by inviting and registering these institutions into the network of Research Africa;
• to use English, French, and Arabic in translating and disseminating research and funding opportunities that can help these African institutions;
• to make Research Africa a vibrant and vigorous networking tool for the dissemination and production of academic material in Africa;
• to generate networks and synergies among scholars at Duke and beyond through the vertical integration of information about Africa and make this information legible to a global community of stakeholders.

John Bartlett is Professor of Medicine, Global Health and Nursing. He also Co-Chairs the Duke University Africa Initiative and is Associate Director for Research of the Duke Global Health Institute and Co-Director of the Duke University Center for AIDS Research. Dr. Bartlett has spent approximately half of the past seventeen years working at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania.

Madison Cullinan is a Duke junior majoring in Public Policy and Arabic. Cullinan is the Associate Editor at Research Africa.

Mbaye Lo is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and International Comparative Studies at Duke University. Lo's interdisciplinary background, in both the humanities and social sciences, places his work on the intersection between language, society, and religion. The intersection between language (Arabic) and religion (Islam) in modern Muslim societies stimulates his interest in militant Islam and modern governance. These intertwined concepts are the focus of Professor Lo's last three English books—Understanding the Muslim Discourse: Language, Tradition and the Message of Bin Laden (2009), Re-inventing Civil Society-Based Governance In Africa (2010) and Muslim Institutions of Higher Education in Postcolonial Africa (2016).

This presentation is sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Center and the Africa Initiative. A light lunch will be served. Parking is available in nearby Trent Rd. and Erwin Rd. parking decks. The series provides 1-hour parking vouchers to guests.