Dr. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is the Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, and Presidential Professor of African American Studies and History, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

He came to LMU in Fall 2009 after serving as head of the Department of African American Studies and the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to that he taught at the Pennsylvania State University and was Director of the Center for African Studies and Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to the United States in 1995 he was College Principal and Professor of History and Development Studies at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Previously he worked at universities in Malawi, Jamaica, and Kenya, and currently also holds the title of Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has worked as a consultant for the Ford and MacArthur foundations and as an adviser to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. He is a past president of the African Studies Association (2008-2009), the largest professional association in the world dedicated to the study of Africa and the African Diaspora. 

Dr. Zeleza earned his B.A. with Distinction from the University of Malawi and an M.A from the University of London, where he studied African history and international relations. He holds his Ph.D. in economic history from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Dr. Zeleza’s academic work has crossed traditional boundaries, ranging from economic and intellectual history to human rights, gender studies, and diaspora studies. He has published more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, reviews, online essays, and short stories and authored or edited 26 books, several of which have won international awards including Africa’s most prestigious book prize, the Noma Award, for his books A Modern Economic History of Africa (1993) and Manufacturing African Studies and Crises (1997). His most recent books include Barack Obama and African Diasporas: Dialogues and Dissensions (Ohio University Press, 2009) and In Search of African Diasporas: Testimonies and Encounters (Carolina Academic Press, March 2012). He has presented nearly 250 keynote addresses, papers, and public lectures at leading universities and international conferences in 31 countries and served on the editorial boards of more two-dozen journals and book series and edited an influential Pan-African online magazine, The Zeleza Post, from 2004-2012.