N'Dri T. Assié-Lumumba, Professor of Africana Studies. In 2006, she was elected as a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. In 1996—97 she served as Director of the Cornell Program on Gender and Global Change (GGC). She is also a member of four other Cornell graduate fields: Education; International Development; International Agriculture and Rural Development; and the Cornell Institute of Public Affairs (CIPA).

Research Interests: Higher education; African and African Diaspora education; comparative and international education; information and communication technologies; educational innovations; human resource development; education finance; gender; family and social institutions; African history with a focus on history of European colonization and expansion in Africa.

Tel: 255-7839, Room 210 • na12@cornell.edu

Professor Assié-Lumumba earned her Ph. D. in Comparative Education (Economics and Sociology of Education) from the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (U.S.A.) in 1982, Two Masters and Two undergraduate degrees in Sociology and History, respectively, from Université Lyon II, Lyon (France) between 1971/72 and 1974/75. She studied also at Université d’Abidjan, Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) and Université Laval, Québec, (Canada). She is Chercheur Associé at Centre de Recherches Architecturales et Urbaines (CRAU) at Université de Cocody, Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), and Research Affiliate of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance of the University of Houston, Houston (Texas, U.S.A.). She is co-founder and Deputy-Director of Pan-African Studies and Research Center in International Relations and Education for Development (CEPARRED), Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). In 2003, she was a Visiting Professor in the Center for the Study of International Cooperation in Education (CICE) at Hiroshima University, Hiroshima (Japan).

Professor Assié-Lumumba came to Cornell in 1991 as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow and Ford Foundation/Africana Studies Fellow. Prior to coming to Cornell she was a Resident Fellow in the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) in Paris (France) where she conducted research and co-taught courses in methodology, sociology, and economics for educational planners; she has held a teaching position and served as administrative/academic director in the Lomé (Togo) CIRSSED doctoral program in education that trained researchers and administrators in education for francophone countries; she held other research and teaching positions in other institutions including the planning unit of the Ministry of National Education of Mali in Bamako (Mali), Bard College and Vassar College (New York, U.S.A.), the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston (Texas, U.S.A.).
She is: the author of Higher Education in Africa: Crises, Reforms, and Transformation, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA: Dakar, 2006), and Les Africaines dans la Politique: Femme Baoulé de Côte d’Ivoire (Paris: Harmattan 1996); the editor of Cyberspace, Distance Learning, and Higher Education in Developing Countries: Old and Emergent Issues of Access, Pedagogy and Knowledge Production, (Leiden and Boston, Brill 2004); co-editor of African Voices in Education, (Cape Town, South Africa: Juta Publishers 2000); and co-author of HARUBA: Modernisation de l'Habitat Rural en Côte d'Ivoire (Québec: Editeur Officiel du Québec, 1978). Her peer-reviewed monographs include Recent Higher Education Innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa: Universities in Francophone Countries, ADEA (Association for the Development of Education in Africa) and AAU (Association of African Universities), Paris and Accra (2003), Assessment of Gender Mainstreaming in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of UNDP Supported Activities. In charge of two chapters: "Gender Mainstreaming and Empowerment" and "Governance and Gender Mainstreaming," New York, New York, 2000, United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Women, for the Africa Bureau of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA); Demand, Access and Equity Issues in African Higher Education: Past Policies, Current Practices and Readiness for the 21st Century, AAU (Association of African Universities), Accra, Ghana, 1994; Also published in French by the Accra, Association of African Universities, 1994; Higher Education in Francophone Africa: Assessment of the Traditional Universities and Alternatives for Development, (English translation of the original version written in French: L'enseignement supérieur en Afrique francophone: Evaluation du potentiel des universités classiques et des alternatives pour le développement,) Sponsored by DAE (Donors to African Education) and published by World Bank (Washington, D.C., 1993-English and French versions published).

Her forthcoming books and manuscripts in progress include: Women and Higher Education in Africa: Reconceptualizing Gender-Based Human Capabilities and Upgrading Human Rights to Knowledge, (Abidjan: CEPARRED Publications (2006) Les femmes et l’enseignement supérieur en Afrique: Engendrer les capacités humaines et élever le niveau du droit au savoir, (Abidjan,CEPARRED Publications, 2006); Technological Transfer and Expansion of Access to Education in Africa: Prospective Reflections on the Educational Television in Côte d'Ivoire (1971-1981); Africana Women and Power: from Centrality to Marginality and a Forward-Looking Perspective.
She has published numerous articles in referred journals including African and Asian Studies, Journal of International Cooperation in Education, Journal of Comparative Education and International Relations in Africa, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, South African Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Education Finance, Journal of Educational Planning and Administration, Problématiques et méthodologies du développement de l’éducation.  Her articles have also appeared as book chapters in African Families at the Turn of the 21st Century; African Women and Globalization:  Dawn of the 21st Century, African(a) Philosophy of Education: Reconstructions and Deconstructions; Visions of Gender Theories and Social Development in Africa: Harnessing Knowledge of Social Justice and Equality; Women in the Third World: an Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues; Engendering African Social Sciences; Education in the Urban Areas: Cross-National Dimensions; International Encyclopedia of Education; L’Égalité devant Soi: sexes, rapports sociaux et développement; Educational Reform in International Context: Ideology, Economy and the State. She is the editor or member of editorial committees of several professional prestigious journals including Comparative Education Review, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, African Sociological Review, Journal of African and Asian Studies, Africa Education Review.
Her articles "Educational and Economic Reforms, Gender Equity, and Access to Schooling in Africa" that was published in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, received the 2001 Joyce Cain Award for Distinguished Research on African Descendants offered by the Comparative and International Education Society. An African expert and international authority on gender, in 2001 and 2006, she received special recognition on the International Women's Day by the International Students and Scholars Office and the Women's Resource Center at Cornell University and she was a nominee of 2003 International Woman of the Year Award by the International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, England.

She has been serving as a member of the United Nations Committee on Development Policy (CDP) since 2001 and of Higher Education Scientific Committee for the Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since 2004. She has served as senior evaluator, adviser, policy analyst, and resource person for projects and programs on African development and higher education for many institutions including several sub-units of the United Nations: various divisions of UNESCO; United Nations Division for Social Policy and Development; Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA); UNDP Africa bureau in New York City and country offices in Africa; UNICEF; UNIFEM; the South African Research Foundation; the International Development Research Center (IDRC); Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); Africa America Institute; and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). She has worked with and is a member of many African professional associations and groups including the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), African Women’s Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA-formerly Donors to African Education-DAE), Association of African Universities, the South African Centre for Education Policy Development, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Foundation Partnership for African Higher Education (Carnegie Corporation and Ford, Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations). She served as a regional adviser on the Advancement of Women in Africa to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing (China) in 1995.
She has designed and/or participated as a resource person in numerous workshops and training programs for professionals including: "Gender and Research Methodology" in the Youth Leadership program of AAWORD (Association of African Women for Research and Development) in Dakar (Senegal); "Gender and Quantitative Research Method in Economic Analysis," joint workshop organized by the North-South Institute, Ottawa (Canada)/GERA (Gender and Economic Reform) and the African Development Bank in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire); "African Perspective on Gender in Research" Gender Institute of CODESRIA, Dakar (Senegal); the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored "African Development Dissertation Workshops" African Ph. D. students, 1996-1998, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal (Canada); "Achieving Gender Equality in Families: the Role of Males (the Transition between the Family and the Formal School Setting)," UNICEF, Kingston (Jamaica); "Gender, Methodology and Educational Research," Association of African Women for Research and Development-AAWORD, Arusha (Tanzania); "Comprehensive Education Analysis," UNICEF, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso); "Practical Training for Educational Planners and Decision-Makers" in collaboration with the University of Florida in Tallahassee, Florida, (Lomé, Togo); "Interpersonal Communication and Development" (University of Chicago—Community and Family Study Center).

She has worked in, and traveled to, many countries North and South America, the Caribbean, Asia and Europe and throughout the African continent where she is familiar with the complex realities of African social contexts and is involved with institutional building and human resource development. Fluent in several languages, she has adapted herself to every type of circumstance and enjoyed working directly with people in a great variety of social settings.

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