Professor Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias FBA

• Medical Doctor
• LicHist Bahia
• MA Ghan

Moraes Farias (Medical Doctor, LicHist Bahia; MA Ghana) was a member of DASA staff until retirement (2003). He is now an Honorary Professor at the department. He is from Bahia, a region of Brazil noted for the cultural heritage it shares with West and Southern Africa. After qualifying at the Federal University of Bahia as a medical doctor and later as a historian, he lived for several years in West Africa, a region he continues to visit regularly for work. Before coming to Birmingham, he worked in the CEAO (Federal University of Bahia) and IFAN (University of Dakar) and taught African History in the Ahmadu Bello University (Zaria, Nigeria).

Moraes Farias has examined doctoral theses at the Université de Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Université de Provence, the University of Tampere (Finland), and the Université de Paris VIII. In Britain, he has examined PhD theses at SOAS, King's College London, University College London, and in Cambridge University and the University of Manchester. The PhD projects he has supervised include:           

• T.O.R. Green, “Masters of Difference: Creolization and the Jewish Presence in Cabo Verde, 1497-1672”
• N. Amherd, “Yoruba Ifa Divination” (co-supervision with K.J. Barber)
• C. Ayorinde, “Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity” (co-supervision with K. Barber)
• I. Nolte, “Ritualised Interaction and Civic Spirituality: Kingship and Politics in Ijebu-Remo, Nigeria” (co-supervision with K. Barber)
• José Flávio Sombra Saraiva, “Brazil’s Foreign Policy towards Africa, 1946-1985: Realpolitik and Discourse”.
• S.P.D. Bulman, “Interpreting Sundiata: A Comparative Analysis and Exegesis of the Malinke Epic”
• M.B. Ahmad, “The Refugee Emirate: Misau’s Bornoan Origins and its Relations with its Neighbours, ca. 1805-1903”
• E. Hodgkin, “Social and Political Relations on the Niger Bend in the 17th Century”

Find out more - our PhD African Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Moraes Farias is one of the rare historians in Britain whose range of interests includes the early pre-colonial history of Africa. His Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali (2003) was a finalist for the Herskovits Award (2004) and won the Paul Hair Prize(2005) conferred by the USA African Studies Association together with the Association for the Preservation and Publication of African Historical Sources. A discussion to explore the issues raised by the work was held at the Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains, Université de Paris-1, and was later published in Afrique&Histoire 4 (2005), 175-243. A similar discussion was organised (2007) by the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa at the Program of African Studies, Northwestern University. 

Reviewers have pointed out that in addition to revealing a corpus of new sources the book deconstructed the established paradigm of Sahelian historical studies, which had originated with Heinrich Barth in the 1850s. Other Moraes Farias publications (on the Almoravids in the Western Sahara, “Silent Trade”, oral traditions, and the interaction of Islamic and other cultures) are also credited with producing shifts of perspective in African studies.

Conference participation

• February 2010 _ Keynote Speaker at the Troisième Rencontre européenne d’analyse des sociétés politiques (Département de science politique of the Université Paris I - Panthéon – Sorbonne).
• December 2009 _ “Heritage Matters !” conference organised by the University of Michigan and the University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
• November 2009 _ Inaugural Conference of the Point-Sud Program, organised by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, and Point Sud, Bamako, Mali.
• April 2009 _ Guest Speaker at Professor Eileen Julien’s seminar “Africa & the History of Ideas”, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University.
• August 2008 _ “Global Seminar” organised in São Paulo, Brazil, by the Media, Religion and Culture Project (Houston, Texas) and Stichting Porticus (Amsterdam).
• August 2008 _ Public lecture “Griots: from ‘Organic’ to ‘Traditional’ Intellectuals”, Clemente Mariani Foundation, Salvador, Brazil.
• February 2008: Workshop on “Religion and Public Moral Debate in Africa”, University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University.

Membership of Editorial Boards                                        

• Africa (Journal of the International African Institute)
• Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara (Paris)
• Afro-Ásia (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
• Afriques -- Débats, méthodes et terrains d'histoire (Paris)

Contributions to Websites

• “Une histoire désertée ? L’histoire de l’Afrique avant le XIXe siècle en France depuis 50 ans" [at the site “Études africaines: état des lieux et des savoirs en France“, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris]