Dr. Tekle Woldemikael

Tekle M. Woldemikael is a Professor of Sociology and International Studies. His broad mission in teaching and research has been to encourage students to develop critical perspectives through active learning about contemporary social issues. He has researched in the US, the Caribbean, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. His various research projects on Haitian immigrants, Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees in the US, southern Sudanese migrants in northern Sudanese towns, and the role of ethnicity in nationalist movements and nation-building in the Horn of Africa have not only given him a broad scholarly perspective but also have enriched and deepened his pedagogical mission. He has years of teaching experience in a broad range of settings, including two years of teaching at the University of Gezira in Sudan and various colleges in the United States, including Chapman University, the University of Redlands, Whittier College, Hamilton College, and the University of Hartford. Some of the classes he has taught are urban Sociology, Principles of Sociology, Bridging Theory and Methods, Research Methods, Social Theory, Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Sociology of Development, Social Movements, Class, and Inequality, Cultural and Structural Inquiry, Ethnographic Methods, and Modern Africa. He has taught in the Honors Programs at Chapman University and the University of Redlands. His most recent research focuses on immigrants and refugees in the US and the nation-building efforts in Eritrea and the Horn of Africa.

Most of the coursed he has taught through are related to his research work: Africans in the New World, the Black Experience in America, Poverty and Refugees, Social Movements, Urban Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Identity and Nationalism, and Contemporary Africa. He plans to publish a book based on his research on refugees.

Tekle Woldemikael has published three books, including Belonging: Maintenance, change, and Status Within the Haitian Community in Evanston, Illinois. Evanston, Illinois: Shorefront Press, 2020; Postliberation Eritrea. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018; and Scholars and Southern Californians in Dialog: New Conversations in Public Sociology. Coeditor with Dr. Victoria Carty and Dr. Rafael Luevano New York; Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. He has guest-edited special issues articles for journals (refereed) including, Journal of Eastern African Studies JEAS on "Asmara as a Contested Modernist African City" Africa Today Journal on "Postliberation Eritrea" Volume 6, Number 20 Winter 2013 and the American Sociologist on "Racial Diversity in Becoming a Sociologist," Volume 19, Number 4 Winter 1988.

Invited Conference Presentation:

Publication:

"The Pitfalls of Nationalism In Eritrea" Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development: Eritrea in the 21st. Century, edited by David O'Kane and Tricia Redeker Hepner published by Berghahn Books 2009.

"An Exploration into the Religious Life of Eritrean Immigrants in the United States" forthcoming in African Christian Diaspora, edited by Frieder Ludwig, Trenton: Red Sea Press

"Africa Today" Vol. 60, No. 2, Guest Editor. Special Issue: Postliberation Eritrea. Author of "Introduction: Postliberation Eritrea" (Winter 2013) (pp. v-xix), Indiana University Press

Invited International Presentation:

In June '09 Professor Woldemikael traveled on invite to Dakar, Senegal to present at this international conference. Below is the title of his paper:

2009 "Islam, the Nation State and the Debate Over National Language in Eritrea" at the International Conference on "Islamic Renewal in Africa: Struggles Over the Public Sphere and Development" organized by the African Study Centre (Leiden University, the Netherlands), Dutch Embassy In Senegal and the Members of the Program "Islam in Africa: Globalization and Moving Frontiers" in Dakar, Senegal, June 23-25.

Conference Presentation:

2009 "The Politics of Memory and Mourning in Eritrea" Pacific Sociological Association Meeting in San Diego April 8-11.