Ismail Rashid grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone and has been teaching at Vassar College since 1998. He received his B.A. Hons in Classics and History from the University of Ghana, M.A. in Race Relations from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada, and Ph.D. in African History from McGill University. His primary teaching interests are pre-colonial and modern African history, African Diaspora and Pan-Africanism, and International Relations. His research interests include subaltern resistance against colonialism, public health, and conflicts and security in contemporary Africa. Some of his publications include West Africa’s Security Challenges (with Adekeye Adebajo, 2004), The Paradox of History and Memory in Postcolonial Sierra Leone (with Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley, 2013) and Understanding West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic: Towards a Political Economy (2017) and Researching Peacebuilding in Africa: Theory, Fieldwork, and Context (With Amy Niang, 2020). He has also published several articles and book chapters. Rashid also mentors graduate African students and rising faculty colleagues in various Africa universities through his voluntary service as an Adjunct faculty for African Leadership Center of King’s College London and the University of Nairobi. He has served as Chair of the Advisory Board of the African Peacebuilding Network of Social Science Research Council (APN-SSRC); Vice President of the West African Research Association (WARA); and a co-editor of Afrika Zamani, the journal of African History, produced by the Council for Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) based in Dakar, Senegal.