CAS Associate Professor of Anthropology Fallou Ngom is among this year’s group of 180 Guggenheim Fellowship recipients, one of the top honors in academia. Chosen from almost 3,000 applicants, Professor Ngom was chosen for both his prior achievements and his exceptional promise. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the winners on April 7.
Professor Ngom, who is also director of the African Language Program, will use the award to continue his research into Wolof Ajami literature and the Africanization of Islam in Senegambia. A native of Senegal, Professor Ngom is one of the world’s leading experts on Ajami literature, a centuries-old literature that uses a modified Arabic script to generate a phonetic rendering of the languages of a number of West African peoples. In 2009, Bostonia magazine featured Professor Ngom’s work to unearth the many hidden secrets that Ajami literature contains.