Omar Ali

Omar Ali serves as dean of Lloyd International Honors College and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences across multiple departments and programs. The author of seven books, including Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press) and In the Lion’s Mouth: Black Populism in the New South, Dr. Ali is a historian of the global African Diaspora who explores the political and scientific contributions and innovations of Africans and people of African descent.

A Fulbright Scholar who has served as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a research associate of the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNCG, and a library scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, he is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science and received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. In 2016, he was named The Carnegie Foundation North Carolina Professor of the Year.

As dean, Ali works with faculty from across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, providing strategic direction and operational leadership to the Aubry Paul and Georgia Garrison Honors College, the Distinguished Visiting Scholars, research fellows, and Artist-in-Residence programs, the University’s four Residential Colleges (Ashby, Strong, North Spencer, and South Spencer, with living-learning themes in law, medicine, art, and social and environmental sustainability), and the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office, serving over 14,000 students.

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, 2003
B.Sc., London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992

Courses Taught

Ali teaches courses in African American and African Diaspora Studies; History; Geography, Environment, and Sustainability; and International and Global Studies

Research

Africa in World History; Black Populism in the New South; Independent Black Politics and the Law; Maroons and Resistance to slavery in Colonial Latin America; Islam in the Indian Ocean world; Africans in the Global History of Science.