The Arts and Sciences community mourns the passing of faculty member Elleni Centime Zeleke, an Assistant Professor of African Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS). A member of the Columbia community since 2018, Professor Zeleke was an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focused on the history of social and political thought in Africa, with a particular emphasis on Ethiopia.
Born in Ethiopia and raised in Toronto, Guyana, and Barbados, Professor Zeleke – known as Centime – received her PhD from York University. Her first book, Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016, was published in 2019 and provided a wide-ranging examination of the literature of the Ethiopian student movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and their afterlife in Ethiopian politics and society.
Professor Zeleke had been working on a second book project, A Jewel in the Ear: The 2020 Ethiopian Civil War and the Limits of Africanist Thought, for which she received a Lenfest Junior Faculty Grant in 2023 to pursue further. Professor Zeleke was a member of the editorial boards of several journals and published widely in her areas of study. At Columbia, she taught classes on the Horn of Africa, African Political Thought, Critical Theory, and Histories of Capitalism.
Our thoughts are with Professor Zeleke’s colleagues, friends, and family members at this difficult time of loss. A memorial gathering in her honor is being planned for the fall and more information will be shared once those arrangements are made.
A remembrance of Professor Zeleke is available on the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies website.
