Tukufu Zuberi Biography

Dr. Tukufu Zuberi is the Director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, a Professor of Sociology. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Mekerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He currently directs the African Census Analysis Project (ACAP) which is an international collaboration with African nations. Dr. Zuberi is recognized in America as an important academic voice and his research focuses on race and African Diaspora populations. The Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania was developed and expanded by him. Dr. Zuberi holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago, is an author and editor of several books, articles, essays, and reviews, and has received numerous awards for his academic work. He is a regular guest lecturer, dedicated to bringing a fresh view of culture and society to the public at colleges and universities across the country, on various programs and internationally. Dr. Zuberi is the author of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: The Mortality Cost of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth-Century and Thicker than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. Part of his written works is a completed manuscript on the history of the Sudan, entitled Pearls of the African Sea: Jenne, Gao, and Timbuktu. He is also the editor of the General Demography of Africa (a multi-volume series), and has written more than 50 scholarly articles and co-edited five volumes. Dr. Zuberi has edited and co-edited special issues of the December 2000 Black Scholar on Transcending Traditions: African, African Diaspora, and African American Studies in the 21st Century; a volume of Race and Society on Racial Statistics; the March 2000 issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on The Study of African American Problems: Papers In Honor Of W.E.B. Du Bois; and a volume of The Journal of Black Studies. He is a co-editor of The Demography of South Africa and White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology. Dr. Zuberi is popularly known as a host on the hit Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series, The History Detectives. History Detectives, now in its seventh season, regularly shows the way individual objects can serve as a lens into the past. As a history detective, Dr. Zuberi is an observer of the social and cultural forces that shape historical mysteries in America’s society. He was raised in the housing projects of Oakland, California in the 1970s, where he embraced the name Tukufu Zuberi – Swahili meaning beyond praise and strength. His desire to make a connection during an important period where people were challenging what it means to be a human being, influenced his decision to adopt the name.

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