Dr. Richard Andrew Lobban, Jr.

Chair, Anthropology Department, Rhode Island College

After completing his Bachelor of Science in Biology in 1966, Dr. Lobban, Jr. received his Masters of Arts in Cultural Anthropology of Africa from Temple and Doctorate of Philosophy from Northwestern University. He has worked as an applied anthropologist in Egypt, a journalist in Sudan and West Africa, covering wars in Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau and southern Sudan. He has served as the Director of the Program of African and Afro-American Studies for almost thirteen years and has been Vice President of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society for many years. Additionally, Dr. Lobban, Jr. has also served as the Executive Director and first President of the Sudan Studies Association and as a Member of the Board of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. Dr. Lobban, Jr. is a Past-President of the Narragansett Society of the Archaeology Institute of America. He has published and lectured widely on the archeology, history, languages and cultures of Africa especially on the Nile Valley societies and on Nubia in particular. Dr. Lobban, Jr.’s other well-known work is on Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. He has taught in Cairo, Khartoum, the University of Pittsburgh, Bucknell, and Dartmouth, as well as lecturing widely in and on Africa and the Middle East. He has been a Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Rhode Island College since 1972, and currently serves as the Chair of the Anthropology Department.

He presents an overview of the achievements and failures of democracy in Africa as well as the colonial inheritance and complex present for political pluralism, focusing on the case of Sudan.