The Social Life of Islam: Exploring Intellectual Exchange and Community Well-Being in West Africa

Join the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Markaz Resource Center for a conversation with Dr. Thiago Mota, Assistant Professor of African History at UC Santa Cruz. Our conversation will explore the globalization of Islam across the African continent, with a particular focus on the religion’s social spread throughout West Africa. Come with us on this storytelling journey as we navigate how embracing Islam shaped social dynamics, intellectual exchange, and community well-being across the region.

This event is presented by the 2026-2027 Abbasi-Markaz Fellow Iyobosa Enabulele.

Thiago Mota is a historian of Africa with a passion for uncovering the ways peoples, ideas, and cultures have traveled and transformed across continents. He is an Assistant Professor of African History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research and teaching explore the interconnected histories of Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with particular focus on Islamic expansion, colonial encounters, and the global circulation of knowledge.

Dr. Mota earned a Ph.D. through a joint program between the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and the University of Lisbon (Portugal), supported by fieldwork and archival research in West Africa and Europe. His dissertation, which received honorable mention in the Agostinho Neto Prize for Historical Research (Angola/UNESCO), forms the basis of his forthcoming book Global Islam from Africa: Islamic Political Culture in Senegambia and the Atlantic Frontier (1400-1850), under contract with Cambridge University Press.