Robert Hanserd

Robert Hanserd, PhD, is a Lecturer of History in the Department of Humanities, History and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. Dr. Hanserd earned his Ph.D. in History from Northern Illinois University in June of 2011. West African culture and history and its circulation across the Atlantic world are central academic interests. Dr. Hanserd uses oral, field, archival and other evidence to investigate Afro-Atlantic and African-American expressions. His work merges insights of history, anthropology, ethnography, and other academic disciplines to study Akan and Fon culture and history. His graduate studies focused on Akan political culture and cosmologies from the 17th to the 19th centuries inspirational to maroons’, free-blacks’ and slaves’ struggles for freedom in North America and the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions and Emancipation. Dr. Hanserd’s research interests also include Allada ancestral traditions and religious cosmologies of the Fon along with Oyo and Western Sudanic history in the Bight of Benin region. He has presented at the American Historical Association Conference and will present at the African Studies Association and Jamaica's Fiftieth Independence Anniversary Conference at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica this year. Forthcoming scholarly articles and manuscript publication will continue examination of African cultural transfer in Atlantic environs..

Contact Dr. Hanserd:

Mail:
Dr. Robert Hanserd
Columbia College Chicago
Department of HHSS
600 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL
60605

Phone:
312.369.7176

Email:
rhanserd@colum.edu