Babacar Fall
Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar

An African Studies Committee Baobab Lecture:
The Window of Hope: Population, Health, HIV/AIDS and Education in Africa

Thursday, May 11, 3:30pm, Art Museum Lecture Hall

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Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar
Labor and Problems of Development in Africa

Tuesday, May 16, 12noon to 1:30pm, EMU Metolius Room

This small seminar style discussion with Dr. Babacar Fall (bio below) will focus on issues of labor and problems of development in Africa. It will be based on his paper "Social History in French West Africa: Forced Labour, Labour Market, Women and Politics" (click for a copy). Please contact Dennis Galvan (dgalvan@uoregon.edu) if you plan to attend.

Babacar Fall is Associate Professor of History at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, in Dakar, Senegal, the leading institution of higher learning in francophone West Africa. His research explores the changing nature of labor relations since the colonial period. His first book, Le travail forcé en Afrique Occidentale Française : 1900 – 1945  (Paris: Karthala Press, 1993) details the use of forced labor as a mechanism of social control and cultural transformation in colonial West Africa. He has also published on labor market changes in the context of contemporary structural adjustment dynamics -- see his edited volume Ajustement structurel et Emploi au Sénégal, (Dakar, CODESRIA, 1996). Professor Fall has worked extensively on oral historical methods for documenting popular responses to social and economic change, publishing most recently Dialogue avec Abdoulaye Ly, historien et homme politique sénégalais (Dakar, IFAN-CAN-ENS, 2001).

Professor Fall is the founding director of the Groupe pour l'Etude et l'Enseignement de la Population (GEEP), a non-governmental organization affiliated with the Education School of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop. GEEP promotes research and direct development action designed to foster popular education and consciousness raising for development, thus putting into practice some of the key themes explored in Professor Fall's research.

Babacar Fall was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan in 1989-90, and will be a Scholar in Residence at the University of Oregon in May 2006, with support from African Studies, International Studies, and the Savage Endowment for International Peace.