Marieme Lo

Associate Professor

Cross Appointments: African Studies

Email: marieme.lo@utoronto.ca

Phone: 416-946-3218

Areas of Interest

  • The political economy of gender and development, development and the human and political ecology of environmental change and disaster in Africa
  • Social learning, poverty, intersectional vulnerabilities and livelihood systems
  • Informal economies (spatial and translocal re-configurations) and neoliberalism
  • Female entrepreneurship, trade, artisanal production and economie solidaire
  • Material culture and cultural economies
  • African urbanisms, postcolonial cities, precarity and the “urban poor,"  and the dynamics of urban transformations
  • Conjugality
  • Governementality, intersectionality, critical race, class, gender, and citizenship in migration studies
  • Globalization, transnationalism, diasporic spaces and social networks, and social ethics

These inquiries are located in critical, feminist, epistemic, and discursive frameworks and debates, the quest for alternative epistemologies and paradigms, and the commitment to social change and social justice.

***Principal Investigator – SSHRC Insight Grant  “Entrepreneurial Nomadism:  Senegalese Women Traders’ Mobilities and Transnational Circuits” (2017-2021)

Gender, Material Culture, & Culture Diplomacy Conference October 7-9, 2010, University of Toronto, St. George Campus

Les thématiques de recherche de Prof. Marieme  Lo englobent:

  • L’économie  politique des questions de  genre et développent,  les problématiques  et théories du développement,  l’écologie humaine et politique du changement environnemental et des désastres en Afrique
  • L’apprentissage social,  la pauvreté, les approches  intersectionelles de la vulnérabilité et des systèmes de survie
  • L’économie informelle (dans ses re-configurations spatiales et translocales) et la pensée néolibérale
  • L’entreprenariat féminin,   le commerce, la production artisanale, et  l’économie solidaire
  • La culture matérielle et  les économies culturelles
  • Urbanismes africains, villes postcoloniales, précarité et “citadins pauvres” et dynamiques des transformations urbaines
  • La conjugalité
  • La gouvernementalite,  l’intersectionalitée,  les pensées critiques sur la race,  la classe, le genre,  et la citoyenneté  dans les questions de migration
  • La globalisation, le  transnationalisme,  les réseaux sociaux  et espaces diasporiques, et les questions d’éthique sociale
  • Les études  africaines

Toutes ces thématiques  sont ancrées dans des approches critiques, féministes, épistémiques, et discursives ;   la recherche d’épistémologies et de paradigmes alternatifs ;  et l’engagement pour le changement  social  et la justice sociale.

***Chercheuse  principale : Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH). « Nomadisme entrepreneurial : la mobilité et les circuits transnationaux des femmes commerçantes sénégalaises (2017-2021)

Biography

Marieme  Lo is an Associate Professor in Women and Gender Studies and African Studies and currently the Inaugural Director of  The African Studies Centre. She holds a Licence from Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, a MA from the University of Dakar (Senegal) and MSc and PhD from Cornell University. She has also received numerous awards and held fellowships at the University of Oxford and Georgetown University. Professor Lo works on intersecting research fields entwined in critical, feminist, alternative and creative epistemologies, and social justice praxis. She  is  wrapping up her  Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded research project, “Entrepreneurial nomadism, mobility and the transnational circuits of Senegalese women entrepreneurs”(2017-2023)  and working on a collaborative project  centered on livelihood and climate change in the Sahel and coastal communities at the interstices of anthropogenic risks, geopolitics,  biopolitical governmentality, and extractivism.​​​

Prof. Lo served as WGSI Graduate Coordinator ( 2015-2017), African Studies Director ( 2017- 2021, 2022), a faculty mentor to students from Africa in the MasterCard Foundation Program (2017-2021) and the School of Cities Associate Director for Education (2018-2021 and 2022). She was also a member of the first Board of Governance of the Université de l’Ontariofrançais (UOF) (2018-2021) and is currently an advisor for the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH).

​​​​​In and outside academia, she has vast experience leading and assessing large scale social impacts, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral research and design projects and has collaborated with grassroots women’s organizations, civil society networks such as the West Africa Civil Society, and international organizations such as UN-Women, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). ​​​​​​​​​

Prof. Lo most recent teaching includes WGSI graduate seminar: WGS1016: Migration, Mobility and Displacement in Contemporary Africa. Prof. Lo often offers directed reading and research  courses to advanced students and has  supervised successful master’s students, and  doctoral students who are pursuing successful academic careers and senior leadership positions within United Nations agencies.

Congratulations to Professor Marieme Lo, inaugural Director of the African Studies Centre!

 

Education

Licence (Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Maitrise (Université de Dakar, Sénégal)

M.Sc, Ph.D. (Cornell University)

Teaching