Pearl T. Robinson is Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a past President of the African Studies Association. She is a scholar of African and African American Politics, and a former Director of Tufts’ International Relations Program, which serves undergraduate students interested in international and regional studies. Having taught at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and chaired the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, she has spent her entire academic career crossing boundaries and bridging divides. Her teaching emphasizes interdisciplinary strategies that privilege participatory learning, transcontinental dialogues, archival research, and study tours. Focused on foreign policy activism at the grassroots level, she has served on Oxfam-America’s board and chaired of its Overseas Program Committee and was also a board member and president of the Boston chapter of TransAfrica, an African-American political lobby for Africa and the Caribbean. Robinson is working on an intellectual biography of Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Peace Laureate, and editing an English version of Mama Kiota, her Hausa-language documentary film about Islam and female empowerment in Niger.
