Konrad Tuchscherer

Dr. Tuchscherer is a specialist in African history and languages. The professor's interests include nineteenth and twentieth century West Africa, colonialism in Africa, and Gullah history in South Carolina and Georgia. His important research on the origin, development and spread of writing in Africa has appeared in several leading journals on the Bagam script of Cameroon in African Affairs, the Vai script of Liberia in History in Africa, the Mende script of Sierra Leone in African Languages and Cultures and Journal of African Cultural Studies, and Egyptian hieroglyphs in Africana Bulletin. Dr. Tuchscherer is currently writing a book entitled Black Scribes that explores the history of the written word in Africa from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to modern West African alphabets. He first began his study of African scripts at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where he took his Ph.D. as a British Marshall Scholar. His research experience in Africa includes Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia.