Sabine Franklin

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Africana Studies

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 2832308
Email:
sf111@wellesley.edu
Department
Africana Studies

Born and bred New Yorker, I am an interdisciplinary scholar that examines how low-income nations govern disease outbreaks.

I completed my PhD in Economics at the University of Westminster in London, UK in 2020. The dissertation examines the local governance of 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia. I am interested in local politics in West Africa, especially on issues of health and development. I was a recipient of the 2022-2023 AAUW postdoctoral research leave fellowship and was hosted at the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, am currently a Fellow for the Governance and Local Development Institute at the University of Gothenburg, and a Visiting Researcher at the Westminster Development Policy Network at the University of Westminster. I am the incoming Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wellesley College in the Africana Studies department. My latest article on the Ebola outbreak was recently published in the world-renown Journal of Institutional Economics. I am currently finishing my research project on COVID-19 emergency strategies in Sierra Leone.

My values are of a student-centered and anti-racist learning approach. This means that I am committed to an inclusive and equitable learning environment and helping students to relate to the material on hand, which can be difficult in Economics or African studies. I am an Associate Fellow of the U.K Advance HE, the professional body that oversees teaching standards at universities in the U.K and I also received my Certificate of College Teaching Preparation (CCTP) at Yale's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, where I focused on Backwards Learning Design and anti-racist and decolonial pedagogy. I am excited to help students learn and develop their research skills and to foster an environment of belonging, expression, and empathy. I am excited to teach AFR 202: Critical Perspectives of Humanitarianism in Black countries and 270: The Politics of Race and Racism in Europe.

I am a fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, an Associate Fellow of UK Advanced HE, a member of Women Graduates and an alumnus of the American Association of University Women and a lifetime member of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's oldest interdisciplinary honor society.

I enjoy gardening and doing minor woodworking projects.

I tweet at @SabineFranklin and would love to connect with you at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinefranklin/

Teaching:

Critical Perspectives of Humanitarianism in Black Countries
The Politics of Race and Racism in Europe
Black Thought in Economics

“Rhodes Must Fall”: Decolonial and Antiracist Research Methods

Current and upcoming courses

Critical Perspectives of Humanitarianism in Black Countries

AFR202

This course examines arguments, claims, and evidence used to justify intervention or non-intervention in key humanitarian crises that have affected Black countries, such as the 1994 Rwandan conflict, 2014 Ebola Outbreak, or the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti. This also questions the role of international organizations that routinely work in such countries and their impacts in local communities. Students interested in global affairs and international relations may be interested in this course, no pre-requisites are needed.