Cheikh Anta Mbacke Babou earned an M.A. and a D.E.A in history from the Universit Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar and a diploma of inspector of education from the Ecole Normale Superieure, also located in Dakar, Senegal. He taught and then worked as a researcher at the Senegalese National Institute for the Development of Education until he left Senegal to pursue a Ph.D. at Michigan State University. He started his Ph.d program in history in MSU in August of 1995. His major field of study is African history and he is especially interested in the history of Muridiyya and the contemporary migration of Murid disciples. Besides pursuing his studies in the history department, he has been involved in many activities on campus. He has been tutoring students in Wolof for three years. He is currently working at H-Net on the Africa Internet Connectivity Project.

Ellen Foley works as a Project Coordinator for the H-Net African Internet Connectivity Project. Last summer she coordinated the Internet connectivity workshop that was attended by 11 scholars and librarians from Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal who received training in the academic uses of the Internet at MSU. She is also coordinating this summers workshop which will be attended by 27 university faculty, administrators and Ministry of Education staff from 6 African countries. Ellen earned her B.A. from Kalamazoo College and is in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at MSU. She has received funding from Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation to conduct her dissertation research titled In Sickness and in Health: Responding to Disease and Promoting Health in Senegal. Her research will address community actions around health and illness in the context of structural adjustment and state decline. She expects to be in the field from Aug. 1998 to Dec. 1999.

Mark Kornbluh is a professor of American History and the Executive Director of H-Net.

David Robinson is a professor of History and African Studies who has done his primary work on Islam and francophone West Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a special emphasis on Senegal, Mauritania and Mali. His best known work is THE HOLY WAR OF UMAR TAL, published in French as LA GUERRE SAINTE D'AL-HAJJ UMAR in 1988. He is working currently on a book tentatively entitled "Paths to accommodation: Muslim societies and French colonial authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, ca. 1880-1920." He has helped to train a number of West Africanists at the doctoral level at Michigan State, including Mohamed Moustapha Kane (d. 1995) of Senegal, Kalala Ngalamulume originally from Zaire, and now Cheikh Babou of Senegal, along with a number of other students in History and Anthropology. He is a founding member of WARA, the West African Research Association, and is currently serving as its vice-president.

Jeanne Maddox Toungara has played a major role in making electronic connectivity for African researchers a priority for the West African Research Association. She served as WARA Board Secretary and directed WARA administration and membership from 1995 to 1997 when the headquarters was located at Howard University. In collaboration with H-Net and MSU, she continues to participate as the WARA Internet liaison and is the local coordinator for the delegates' visit to data collections and funding agencies in Washington, D.C.. Dr. Toungara earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is a Fulbright scholar and a faculty member in the Department of History at Howard University where she teaches the history of Africa and the African Diaspora. She has published extensively on Cote d'Ivoire and is working on a book-length manuscript on the 19th-century kingdom of Kabasarana.

John Metzler is the Outreach Coordinator of the African Studies Center.

Jonathan Miran is a doctoral student in African history. Before coming to Michigan State University, he graduated from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris where he studied African and Middle Eastern studies. Jonathan is mainly interested in the social history of Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as in issues of ethnicity and religion in Northeast Africa. Currently, he is working on a dissertation which focuses on the social and economic history of the Red sea port of Massawa and its region in the nineteenth century.

David Wiley is Professor of Sociology and Director of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. Previously, he chaired the African Studies Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, was a lecturer at University of Zambia, and in the 1960s, worked in race relations in the U.S. and in Southern Rhodesia. Wiley is the President-Elect of the African Studies Association. He has served as chairperson of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advisory Committee for International Programs as well as international committees of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Sociological Association. He is a member of the Higher Education Forum of the U.S./South Africa Bi-National Commission. Currently, he is co-chairperson of the Council of Directors of Title VI National Resource Centers, for more than 100 U.S. foreign language and area studies National Resource Centers. He has been co-chairperson of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, a national organization seeking to influence U.S. foreign policy. He has been Vice-Chairperson, U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, chairing delegations to UNESCO-Paris, Greece, and Spain.

He has conducted research as a Fulbright Fellow in South Africa in 1995-96 and previously in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Kenya. His publications include: Negotiating Environment and Development in South Africa (1996); Managing Waste More Sustainably in Inanda (Durban, South Africa): A Report and Recommended Programmes, (1995); Southern Africa: Society, Economy and Liberation (1980); Group Portrait: International Education in the Academic Disciplines (1990), Academic Analysis and U.S. Foreign Policy-Making on Africa (1991); The Third World: Africa (1984), Africa on Film and Videotape (1982). Currently, he is editor of the quarterly journal African Rural and Urban Studies.