Professors:
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Extension: x5393 Office Hours: Tue 11:45-12:45; Thu 4:00-5:00 Mary Johnson Osirim is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Ethnicities, Communities and Social Policy. As a former Coordinator of the Africana Studies Program and Bryn Mawr Director of the African Studies Consortium (Dept. of Education’s Title VI Center), she assisted in establishing study-abroad programs in Africa, most notably in Zimbabwe. She is a member of the Africana Studies and Feminist and Gender Studies Programs.Her teaching and research have focused extensively on gender and development in sub-Saharan Africa and the English-speaking Caribbean, social structure in the US, economic sociology, the sociology of the family, and race and ethnic relations. During the past 19 years, she has conducted extensive fieldwork on the development of entrepreneurship in the formal and informal sectors of urban southwestern Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Through intensive interviewing of women and men in their small and micro-enterprises about their businesses and family lives, she has developed expertise in gender relations and the household, the roles of the state and non-governmental organizations in business and community development. Recently, she has turned her attention towards the establishment of non-governmental organizations in Zimbabwe and South Africa that are committed to the elimination of all forms of violence against women and are working towards the creation of social policies to address this issue. In this process, she has attempted to document the "agency" of African women and their empowerment. Within the US, her research interests have included studies of the "professionalization" of African American women in the academy and the performance of students of color in sociology. She is the author of numerous articles on these issues including publications in Women's Studies International Forum and African Rural and Urban Studies. For over a decade, students have played a focal part in her research in Africa. Several students have worked with her as research assistants interviewing women microentrepreneurs and the leaders of non-governmental organizations in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. She plans to continue to work with students as peers in her upcoming research project on "The New African Diaspora: African Immigrant Communities in the Northeastern US." She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including grants from the National Science Foundation, a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs and a Carter G. Woodson Fellowship in Afro-American and African Studies. During her fieldwork in southern Africa, she was a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Zimbabwe. In April 2001, she was a Minority Scholar-in-Residence at Illinois State University.
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Mary
Johnson Osirim