Experts on countries of origin by country

David Glovsky is an Assistant Professor of African History at Boston University (BU). He is a historian of 19th and 20th century West Africa, with a focus on Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. His research and teaching interests include histories of mobility and migration, borderlands, spatial history, Islam, citizenship, gender, and histories of popular culture/sport.

Prof. Glovsky has extensive research experience in greater Senegambia, focused on cross-border mobility and belonging among primarily rural communities. His work is embedded in understanding how people in border regions conceive of their spaces, rather than state views from the outside. He holds a B.A. in History and Human Geography from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in African History from Michigan State University. Prior his time at BU, he taught in the Department of Africana Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

The Expert is a Professor of African History, a director of Enslaved.org, and an editor of the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation at Michigan State University. His areas of research specialization are West Africa, the Atlantic, and Brazil. He lived in Guinea-Bissau for two years and return frequently for research. The Expert also travels frequently to The Gambia and Senegal. He has lived in Cape Verde, Portugal and Brazil for research purposes. He is particularly interested in the history of slavery and the Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Much of his research has focused on African agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and family structures in the Old and New Worlds.

His first book, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900 (Heinemann: 2003), explores the impact of interactions with the Atlantic on small-scale, decentralized societies. His most recent book, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1830 (Cambridge: 2010), examines the trade in enslaved people from Upper Guinea to Amazonia Brazil. He has published in a range of scholarly journals such as Journal of African History, Luso-Brazilian Review, Slavery and Abolition, Africa, Journal of Global History, American… Read more