The School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, has announced that Cheikh Thiam is the new academic dean for Africa South of the Sahara.
As academic dean, Dr. Thiam will lead one of the broadest portfolios of programs in Africa of any U.S. institution. The School for International Training’s multidisciplinary portfolio of accredited undergraduate programs covers nine sub-Saharan countries and encompasses subjects such as biodiversity and wildlife management, multiculturalism and human rights, health policy and social transformation, and a journalism program.
Dr. Thiam has been serving as co-leader of the school’s study abroad programs in Senegal focused on global security and religious pluralism. Earlier in his career, he was an associate professor of African American studies, African studies, and French at Ohio State University. He is the author of Return to the Kingdom of Childhood: Re-envisioning the Legacy and Philosophical Relevance of Negritude (Ohio State University Press, 2014).
In accepting his new role, Dr. Thima stated: “I am looking forward to taking on this expanded role at SIT, while drawing from my research examining collective imaginations of being and identity in Africa and the African diaspora in the colonial and postcolonial era.”
Dr. Thima is a graduate of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. He earned a master’s degree in French from the University of Provence in France and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Binghamton University in New York.
