Ousseina Alidou

Ousseina D. Alidou (born 1963)^[1] is an Africanist scholar specialising in the study of Muslim women in Africa.^[2] She is a professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at Rutgers University.^[3] She was a member of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and co-edited the widely cited anthology A Thousand Flowers (2000).^[4] Her work on Engaging Modernity has also been widely cited.^[5]

She travelled to the US from Niger in 1988 to pursue her studies. She received her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Indiana University Bloomington.^{[6] [7]}

Her twin sister Hassana Alidou has been Niger's ambassador to the United States since February 2015.^[8]

Awards

• 2006 Rutgers University Board of Trustees Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence ^[9]
• 2007 Runner-up, Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association for Engaging Modernity ^[10][11]
• 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award of the Africa-America Institute, ^[9]

Publications

• A Thousand Flowers:Social struggles against structural adjustment in African universities co-edited with Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,2000)
• Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)
• Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, and Social Change (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)

References