Timothy Longman

9/30/09 3:15:44 PM -- Boston, Massachusetts Office Portrait of New African Studies Center Director Tim Longman is for BU Today. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University Photography

Timothy Longman is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boston University, where he serves as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the Pardee School of Global Studies. He has also served as the Director of CURA: the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs since 2017. From 2009 to 2017, he served as Director of BU’s African Studies Center. He teaches International Human Rights, Introduction to Comparative Politics, African Politics, Southern African Politics, Religion and International Relations, Religion and Politics, and a seminar on Rwanda: Genocide and Its Aftermath. He has led or taught in study abroad programs to Zanzibar, South Africa, Kenya, and China.

Professor Longman’s research focuses on state-society relations in Africa, particularly religion and politics, human rights and transitional justice, civil society and democratization, and the politics of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality. Although he has conducted research in many African countries, (including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa), most of his publications have focused on Rwanda.  His first book, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda (Cambridge 2010), sought to explain how Rwanda’s Christian churches became complicit in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. His 2017 book, Memory and Justice in Rwanda (Cambridge), explores the process of social reconstruction in Rwanda from both the national and grassroots level. It was named the top book in African politics by the African Politics Conference Group and honorable mention for both the African Studies Association Best Book Prize and the Bethwell Ogot Prize. From 1995-1996, Longman served as the director of the Rwanda office for Human Rights Watch and FIDH (the International Federation of Human Rights), and he was a main researcher and contributing author for the book, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (HRW and FIDH, 1999, published in English, French, and Kinyarwanda), which won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the most important book in the field of human rights. In addition, he has published over three dozen articles and book chapters.

Prior to coming to BU, Professor Longman taught at Vassar College for over a decade. He has also held research and teaching positions at the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley; the National University of Rwanda; the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa; Drake University; and Columbia University. He has served as a consultant for Human Rights Watch, USAID, and the International Center for Transitional Justice in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda. He has testified as an expert witness in a dozen trials related to the  genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in the US, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the UK, as well as at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. His research has been funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the United States Institute for Peace, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Sandler Family Foundation.

CV 2023

Syllabi for some of my courses can be found here:

http://sites.bu.edu/longman/2018/01/19/syllabi/

Media Appearances

Interview with Richard Derderien for Realms of Memory Podcast, December 2022.

Interview with Brent Steele for Hayseed Scholar Podcast, August 2021.

Interview with Jim Conan for True Stories Podcast, 2018.