Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is Vice Chancellor and Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, a position he assumed on January 1, 2016. He was installed as the university’s second Vice Chancellor on Thursday, April 7, 2016.
Prior to joining USIU-Africa, he was Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of History at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, USA. Previously he was Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and the President’s Professor of History and African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He also served as head of the Department of African American Studies and the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, taught at the Pennsylvania State University, and was Director of the Center for African Studies and Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to the United States in 1995, he was College Principal and Professor of History and Development Studies at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Earlier he worked at the University of Malawi, University of the West Indies, and Kenyatta University. In 2006 he was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In Fall 2015, he was a fellow at Harvard University.