Prof. Ousmane Kane
Short-Term Fellow
May 2025
Bio
Ousmane Kane earned a Ph.D. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France in 1993. He is currently the Emeritus Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School, and professor of African and African American Studies at the faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University.
Before his time at Harvard, he served as an associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University .He has received many awards and fellowships, including the Leverhulme Trust fellowship at the University of London, the Institute for Advanced Studies Berlin fellowship, the Everett Mendelsohn Award for Excellence in Mentoring from the Harvard Graduate Student Council, and the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association of North America.
Kane’s publications include Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts (ed., London, 2021), Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, 2016), and Non Europhone Intellectuals (Dakar, 2012).
Research
Islamic Studies, Postcolonial Studies, History, Political Sociology
Regions
West Africa
Languages
Arabic, Wolof, French, Hausa, English
books
Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts (ed.), London: James Currey, 2021.
Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
The Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism and the Integration of Senegalese Immigrants in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Non Europhone Intellectuals, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2012.
Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria, Leiden: E. J.Brill, 2003.
Articles
« L’islamisme d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Quelques enseignements de l’Afrique de l’Ouest,» Cahiers d’Etudes africaines, LII (2-3) ; 206-207 (2012), pp. 545-574.
“Reconciling Islam and Non Islamic Beliefs: Reflection on a Talismanic Textile of the Art Institute of the Chicago,” Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara, 2, pp. 137-161.
« Les marabouts sénégalais et leur clientèle aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique. Une économie spirituelle transnationale,» Afrique contemporaine, 231 (2009), pp. 209-28.
“Réflexion sur les émeutes interconfessionnelles au nord du Nigéria,” Politique étrangère, 3 (2002), pp. 749-764
“La Citoyenneté, la Société et l’Etat: le modèle sénégalais,” Revue sénégalaise de sociologie, 2-3 (1998-99), pp. 231-240.
Films
